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[microsound] [ot] friendly fascism



> for myself, i think of it as a police state- since fascism is so over
> used as to be rendered meaningless. also, 'police state' emphasizes
> the military dimention of the authoritarian government, where fascism
> has racial or political overtones.

this is the trouble with most american's impressions of political  
concepts...
we are all taught a certain way of looking at the world in school and  
we thus frame the world in this manner...
so americans know little to nothing about socialism/marxism because  
we are not exposed to it nor taught about it in school...it is not  
part of our culture, except for learning about the era of McCarthyism  
in history class...
isn't it funny that McCarthyism happened just about the time that the  
Marshall Plan was instituted in Europe -- which was done to keep  
unionized labor (read: communism) from forming which would have  
locked out US business interests in a post-war europe/ussr recovery?  
why was 1950's post-war america so flush with cash? think about it...

also, a factoid: less than 10% of the american population holds a  
passport...
this instills a sense of isolationism in citizens which keeps up  
buffered from not only the problems in the rest of the world but also:
how the US impacts the rest of the world
how others perceive us as world citizens
how our rampant consumerism effects the planet
and most importantly how other nations choose to organize their  
societies (Venezuela, Bolivia, Cuba, Viet Nam, Brazil, EU, etc)  
differently than ours

fascism - as a concept - has distinct negative connotations but the  
surface traits are exaggerated and fed to us by the dominant  
ideological machine in the US: our educational system
this is done in order to keep us thinking that fascism could never  
happen here and that what we have is different

the truth is something else entirely -- the fact is we are living in  
a corporatocracy which is similar to corporatism
again, so long as lobbying is legal we have the greedy leading the  
blind...

compare the two for yourself:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporatism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporatocracy

> Many critics of free market theories, such as George Orwell, have  
> argued that corporatism (in the sense of an economic system  
> dominated by massive corporations) is the natural result of free  
> market capitalism.

often times I hear people refer to US democracy as 'Jeffersonian'
read this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffersonian_democracy

does this sound like something we have? especially in light of the  
recent signing of the Military Commissions Act?
our democracy is deteriorating before our eyes...

what we are blissfully gliding past is a stage of fascism called  
friendly fascism
read this because it will open your eyes a bit to what is happening  
here:

http://a4a.mahost.org/gross.html

how does all this impact us as artists? as people who are creative  
and cherish the freedom to express ourselves?

what sorts of decisions/actions can we take to combat these things?

is it possible to still have a political voice as an artist and be  
taken seriously?

is it possible to use artistic subversion to spread a message of  
resistance? -- such as Banksy?
http://www.banksy.co.uk/