Do the right thing even when no one is looking. It is called integrity. For many years the Ku Klux Klan and it’s many associated hate groups literally got away with murder. These hate groups were a…
Source: On confronting the Ku Klux Klan
Month: June 2016
The fake & the actual choice Europeans face – by Slavoj Žižek
The fake choice is between :(1) a globalised, financialised version of capitalism that is run by a transnational technocracy, tolerates minorities and turns parliamentary democracy into an empty shell, and (2) a xenophobic, socially conservative, passionate nativism that invokes national democratic sovereignty only to forsake it soon after. The real, actual choice is between (A) a vicious cycle between (1) & (2) above and (B) a pan-European democratic project addressing the actual challenges humanity faces (e.g. the deflationary moment in our history, the inexorable devaluation of human labour, TTIP like attacks on sovereignty, climate change etc.).
Slavoj Žižek, philosopher, friend and DiEM25 early signatory, writes on the DiEM25 site that Europeans face one fake and one actual choice. The fake choice is between :(1) a globalised, financialised version of capitalism that is run by a transnational technocracy, tolerates minorities and turns parliamentary democracy into an empty shell, and (2) a xenophobic, socially conservative, passionate nativism that invokes national democratic sovereignty only to forsake it soon after. The real, actual choice is between (A) a vicious cycle between (1) & (2) above and (B) a pan-European democratic project addressing the actual challenges humanity faces (e.g. the deflationary moment in our history, the inexorable devaluation of human labour, TTIP like attacks on sovereignty, climate change etc.). Click here for the full article.
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On Brexit, the EU’s slide into crisis & the need for a pan-European democratic alternative- on ABC’s LNL with Phillip Adams
Yanis Varoufakis, former Greek finance minister who stood toe-to-toe with the economic forces of recession and depression speaks on the effects of Brexit.
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On confronting the Ku Klux Klan
Do the right thing even when no one is looking. It is called integrity.
For many years the Ku Klux Klan and it’s many associated hate groups literally got away with murder. These hate groups were and still are instruments of fear and their targeted populations knew that this use of fear was intended to control them.
Notice the burning swastika along side the burning cross.
It is dangerous to confront evil, but without proper treatment a wound only tends to fester and perhaps become gangrene.
I do not feel badly toward those who justifiably fear for their personal safety and/or the safety of their loved ones. It is those who foster and promote fear in the larger community as if to protect them from danger preventing any effective action being taken to display public and communal rejection of the Klan’s tactics of hate and fear that I disdain. I disdain them for it is them who should be at the head of efforts to expose the Klan and associated hate groups for what they are, i.e., purveyors of hate who thrive on producing fear in those that are otherwise unprotected by the “larger society.”
A scene from the 1915 movie, The Birth of a Nation, showing African-American character, Gus (played by white actor, Walter Long, in blackface) about to be killed by the Ku Klux Klan
In my studies of the history of the KKK there has been two ways they have faded into the shadows. Yes, faded into the shadows for those that truly hate never completely disappear they are simply kept in check by being exposed for what they are, “HATERS: nothing but haters.”
The methods of their diminution are as follows:
1. they succeeded in intimidating their target communities enough for the general population of scared whites to no longer feel the need to tolerate the open and public ugliness of the Klan.
2. the targeted community and their allies confront them until their evil ways are exposed to the general population such that the general population feels enough shame so they cease supporting the Klan.
Some seem to suggest that the Klan should be ignored thus by denying them publicity in hopes they will go away. But history doesn’t seem to confirm this idea. That is to say, “Those who would use violence to deny others their rights cannot [afford to] be ignored.” That the law must be exercised if it is to have a truly strong effect is a truism, but it does hold a great truth within for even racists must learn they are required to respect the law.
The rapid rise of the KKK in Oregon in the early 1920s offers an illustration of what can occur in a community where the citizens allowed themselves to be silenced in the face of the hatred they saw and heard around them. While the silence of the members of the “larger” community emboldened the organizers of the Oregon Klan in the 1920s it was not until the “greater” community began to display sufficient courage to publicly speak out against the Klan that they were exposed for the simple opportunists and hate mongers that they are. Opportunists who often sought political power and financial rewards for playing on the fears and hatreds of the common and usually the undereducated in a community.
According to Morris Dees, co-founder of The Southern Poverty Law Center, most of the rank and file members of the KKK he met while taking depositions and in personal interviews were “basically good people,” that they were “little different” from his rural neighbors and many of his relatives. However, there was one exception to this assessment; most of them were “life’s losers.” Within Klan organizations and similar hate groups those “losers” find opportunities for social interaction they often miss in the larger community, that they are often presented the chance to become “leaders” of a sort that they may never otherwise have a chance to become and that they are presented a forum to vent their gripes among others who are either as ignorant as themselves or are happy to exploit the ignorance of this uninformed populace.
All this said hate groups are dangerous and they are unpredictable in how they will act out their brands of hate, but one thing that has ever remained true, that is, not to stand face-to-face with such groups is to secure the support of those marginalized individuals and groups they rely on for their sustenance and growth.
For further reading see:
Southern Poverty Law Center Publication––Ku Klux Klan: A History of Racism and Violence, https://www.splcenter.org/sites/default/files/Ku-Klux-Klan-A-History-of-Racism.pdf
http://www.history.com/topics/ku-klux-klan
Roger W Mills II
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Financialisation, politics & the future of socialism: A conversation in Seattle with Casey Jaywork
Imagine a society where the only way you can have shares in a company is if you work in it. Imagine we had a rule everywhere that you can work in that company and have shares in it, but if you work in that one then you can’t have shares in the other. You can lend money to the other, you can lend some of your capital, but you cannot have equity. Because equity gives you a claim to the profits that the people who are working in the other company are making. And then you get the capitalist dynamic, which leads to inefficiency and crisis. So in the end you end up with cooperatives, but you can have now smart stock exchanges where people can, as they move jobs, carry their capital with them. That creates mobility and different forms of corporate organization where the people who work are the shareholders of the company, and when they move they take their capital with them. [excerpt]
In April 2016, in the context of a talk I gave in Seattle’s City Hall, Casey Jaywork (of the Seattle Weekly) and I had this conversation. For Casey’s site click here. Or…
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On the human penchant for art & science: Brian Eno & Yanis Varoufakis in conversation
This conversation, moderated by David McWilliams, took place on 17th May 2016, at the Dalkey Book Festival. Its theme? Why humans have a need for art and what is the difference/similarity between art and science. Plus a little politics thrown in for good measure.
This conversation, moderated by David McWilliams, took place on 17th May 2016, at the Dalkey Book Festival. Its theme? Why humans have a need for art and what is the difference/similarity between art and science. Plus a little politics thrown in for good measure.
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The Right Left for Europe: In response to leftwing Brexiters, Grexiters etc. – Project Syndicate Op-Ed
Last year, when Greece’s official creditors threatened us with ejection from the eurozone, even from the EU, I was undaunted. DiEM25 is imbued with this spirit of defiance: we will not be forced by the prospect of the EU’s disintegration to acquiesce to an EU of the establishment’s choosing. In fact, we believe it is important to prepare for the collapse of EU under the weight of its leaders’ hubris. But that is not the same as making the EU’s disintegration our objective and inviting European progressives to join neo-fascists in campaigning for it.
The philosopher Slavoj Žižek, a DiEM25 signatory, recently quipped that socialist nationalism is not a good defense against the postmodern national socialism that the EU’s disintegration would bring. He’s right. Now more than ever, a pan-European humanist movement to democratize the EU is the left’s best bet. [excerpts]
ATHENS – The United Kingdom’s referendum on whether to leave the European Union created odd bedfellows – and some odder adversaries. As Tory turned mercilessly against Tory, the schism in the Conservative establishment received much attention. But a parallel (thankfully more civilized) split afflicted my side: the left.
Having campaigned against “Leave” for several months in England, Wales, Northern Ireland, and Scotland, it was inevitable that I faced criticism from left-wing supporters of “Brexit,” or “Lexit” as it came to be known. [For the rest of the article click here]
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Brexit won’t shield Britain from the horror of a disintegrating EU
Leave won because too many British voters identified the EU with authoritarianism, irrationality and contempt for parliamentary democracy while too few believed those of us who claimed that another EU was possible.
The repercussions of the vote will be dire, albeit not the ones Cameron and Brussels had warned of. The markets will soon settle down… However, despite the relative tranquillity that will follow on from the current shock, insidious forces will be activated under the surface with a terrible capacity for inflicting damage on Europe and on Britain.
Italy, Finland, Spain, France, and certainly Greece, are unsustainable under the present arrangements. The a]rchitecture of the euro is a guarantee of stagnation and is deepening the debt-deflationary spiral that strengthens the xenophobic right. Populists in Italy and Finland, possibly in France, will demand referendums or other ways to disengage.
I refuse to be downcast, even though I count myself on the losing side of the referendum.
As of today, British and European democrats must seize on this vote to confront the establishment in London and Brussels more powerfully than before. The EU’s disintegration is now running at full speed. Building bridges across Europe, bringing democrats together across borders and political parties, is what Europe needs more than ever to avoid a slide into a xenophobic, deflationary, 1930s-like abyss. [excerpts]
Bringing democrats together across borders is needed now to prevent a slide into a xenophobic, 1930s-like abyss
Click here for The Guardian site or…
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On the Ignorance in America’s Politics
“Knowledge will forever govern ignorance, and a people who mean to be their own governors, must arm themselves with the power knowledge gives. A popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy or perhaps both” ― James Madison
We need to make ourselves aware of the vast void and dearth of knowledge that fills the American political spectrum. Moreover, we on the left desperately need to understand how this situation developed. There are far too many “good” Americans who wants to rely on a “mythical America” of the Founders and the Framers. These people never seem to have a clue what the “Founders” or “Framers” did or thought much less the ways they often changed their minds and contradicted each other. These mythical creatures, “the Founders/Framers” have in a very real sense been converted to “religious icons” that are to be worshiped and never questioned.
Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add ‘within the limits of the law’ because law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.― Thomas Jefferson
Of course they were very human and made numerous mistakes, sometimes even grave mistakes. They were not gods and the documents they produced (the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution) were not nor are they HOLY WRIT in any sense. To make them some sort of “American Bible” would be to remove their essential character which was to be a means for “the people” to see to their own governance. The constitution was a product of profound compromise. That document wholly pleased no one then; so why should we accept it as unchangeable, now. Indeed the constitution was viewed by the Framers as a starting point for the nation as a whole to begin the vital process of self-governance. They even provided not one but two means for amending of the constitution1.
“Learned institutions ought to be favorite objects with every free people. They throw that light over the public mind which is the best security against crafty and dangerous encroachments on the public liberty.” ― James Madison
Mr. Madison, the principle author of the constitution, was very disappointed in it in a number of points, but he also knew it was the best compromise he was able to achieve. Surely, it would be debatable whether had he achieved all he had envisioned if the constitution would have been significantly better. It certainly would still not have been perfect anymore than he was perfect. Thus the constitution was a compromise from which to begin the process of governance not a finished and completed piece of Holy Writ. Indeed they provided not one but two ways that document could be amended to meet the needs of the times.
He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself. ― Thomas Paine
If there was one unifying idea in the minds of the Founders/Framers it was the idea that: “We gave you a Republic2 now can you keep it?” People, who was so piteously manipulated by both the wings of the National Corporate Party and its vast and massive propaganda machine, are mere puppets to corporate surrogates who rule this country and to the corporate media who thrive on the utter lack of knowledge and understanding found in the masses of undereducated Americans. These people have grown up being taught “how great this nation is,” “how special they are to be an American,” and “how everything American is so much better than anything not American” among other myths that act like balm to wounded egos. They have been taught that they live in a democracy with democratic institutions and a political system consisting of a ruling party. They have blindly accepted the myth that we have a fair, free and open press which is adversarial to the ruling class. This blind acceptance of “American Exceptionalism” is from whence their ignorance stems. Because of the belief in the ultimate “goodness” of America the average citizen assumes America can do no wrong except that which is unintentional or unwitting. This is a dangerous frame of mind for a people and it leads directly to authoritarianism.
“Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people. The same malignant aspect in republicanism may be traced in the inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war, and in the degeneracy of manners and of morals engendered by both. No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.” ― James Madison, Letters and other writings of James Madison
While it is understandable from an intellectual perspective it is a very sad condition for a supposedly educated and enlightened people. It is also a product of the dissolution of the system of free mass education3 the US used to maintain. I remember when I was in the 4th through the 8th grades being taught by educators who had received a true “liberal arts” education. An education that included instruction in not only history, science, math and government, but in the “classics” and the arts as well as the art of critical thought. These were many of the same educators who taught my mother. Mine was the last generation lucky enough to have been instructed by them; they were the older teachers in the early to mid 1960s to whom I am referring. Even then those educators were lamenting the demise of the public educational system4. They saw the quality of instruction failing because an emphasis was even then being shifted from critical thought to a technical education to prepare students for a job instead of a career. It was already becoming an education of do as you are told and do not question your superiors where it has come to the point where children are expected to simply regurgitate information without critically considering its implications.
If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be. ―Thomas Jefferson to Charles Yancey, 1816
Then the perfect excuse to start utterly abandoning the education of our youth arose in the mid 1960s. At least that is when it come to my school. I refer to the time when the–supposedly–inferior race was forced upon us superior white children. Then the richer and more powerful members in our communities began withdrawing their children from public schools so their “special” children would not be tainted by those inferior “colored” children5. It was real. It is the basis upon which the privatization of our public educational system is built. It is still as racist now as it was then. And it is producing an ever more uneducated and uninformed populace.
What spectacle can be more edifying or more seasonable, than that of Liberty and Learning, each leaning on the other for their mutual and surest support? ― James Madison
The solution appears simple to me. It is for the populace, the citizenry to take control of their government first by ensuring that corporations and the 1% can’t buy those that govern. This can never be accomplished while the 1% hold control of the means of production so it will be necessary for those that produce the wealth of the country to own and control the factories, stores and other places of employment. For those who work in their own businesses to control the means of production and distribution to make the decisions of what to produce, when to produce it, how to produce it and what to do with the profits created by that process of production and distribution. If the working men and women in this country don’t take control of this process the 1% will continue to amass an ever increasing percentage of the nation’s wealth and the working men and women will thus continue to suffer economically and politically.
“History records that the money changers have used every form of abuse, intrigue, deceit, and violent means possible to maintain their control over governments by controlling money and it’s issuance.” ― James Madison
Only when we bring democracy to the workplace will we ever be able to truly bring democracy to the political sphere.
Roger W Mills II
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The Constitution provides that an amendment may be proposed either by the Congress with a two-thirds majority vote in both the House of Representatives and the Senate or by a constitutional convention called for by two-thirds of the State legislatures. https://www.archives.gov/federal-register/constitution/
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Note the use of the word “Republic” not the word “Democracy”. The Founders had no desire to create a Democracy and they never used the word to describe what they had created. The concept was a “Representative form of Government,” not a government were the people governed but one where their representatives governed in their place.
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That system of free public education was at its best ever a conditional one as it greatly favored white Euro-Americans and even more so rich Euro-Americans. Unfortunately I haven’t the time nor space to delve into those injustices here. I hope to do so in a later post. “The advancement and diffusion of knowledge is the only guardian of true liberty.” ― James Madison
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Now there were some good educators who followed them, but the teaching of “liberal arts” was a dying institution by then.
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I lived through this and I remember well this line of reasoning where racists throughout my community plainly stated that attending school with “Negroes” would produce an inferior white race. This was stated in just so many words and is a direct quote I heard as if a refrain from a cacophony of whites. Of course they have been proved right, but not because of integration but rather because of those whites who have continually cut funding for education and enforced ever larger classes on teachers among other restrictions that have been used to deteriorate the public educational system so as to privatize it.
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Creditors Uninterested in Getting Their Money Back – Political Economy lecture, now published in the Australian Journal of Political Economy
The problem is that creating a monetary union is a little bit like invading Russia. At first, there is rapid progress, as the French troops, Napoleon or the Wehrmacht found when they stormed the country, taking large tracts of land without much resistance. Then slowly, as the heavy winter sets in, the Cossacks and the Russian partisans start blowing up your convoys. Eventually you end up with blood on the snow and a hasty retreat. Recall the 1920s – after the Great War the Gold standard had created ‘the Roaring 20s’. Similarly, when Mexico and Argentina pegged their currency one to one on the US dollar, there was a flood of capital coming from the major surplus country – the United States – into Mexico and Argentina, creating the feeling of triumph, growth and investment. It was exactly the same in the Eurozone.
rogerwillismills 