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July 96
Revised March 2001

The Dark Age Continuum

Emma Goldman - Free speech from far right to near right
By Kevin Sullivan

"Freedom of expression was a cause Emma Goldman championed throughout her adult life. She was outraged that in the United States, "a country which guaranteed free speech, officers armed with long clubs should invade an orderly assembly." As an anarchist (no rulers, not, no rules) orator, Emma faced constant threats from police and vigilantes determined to suppress her talks. Undeterred, Goldman continued to assert her right to speak, though she paid dearly for her principles. Arrested and tried in 1893 for urging a crowd of hungry, unemployed workers to rely on street demonstrations rather than on the electoral process to obtain relief, Goldman based her defense squarely on the right of free speech--and lost. She spent ten months in jail, a reminder that in nineteenth century America the right of free speech was still a dream, not a reality." (Excerpt from the Emma Goldman Project [http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/Goldman/Exhibition/] - CHECK IT OUT!)

In a strange way Emma's dream of Free Speech has come true.  In Emmas day it was might makes right, if you had more muscle than the pinkertons and the cops you had the right of free speech . . . until the army showed up.

Under right wing neo-liberalism, free speech has evolved to mean you can say whatever you want as long as nobody hears you. Corporarchy has complete control of the political process through their ownership of the media.  They are the gatekeepers of information.  Talk radio and "news" exist to manage our opinions and surreally, in the commercial system, the victim/consumer pays for it all.  Bogus history is taught in our schools. These are the realities that ensure that most Americans are ignorant with regard to this country's historic behavior towards the working class - them. When we look into the memory hole for the truth and look away from the ahistorical big lie, it's not even very complex. It's very clear. "It's the plutocracy stupid."

 We are taught lies about "Red" Emma, Eugene Debs, Big Bill Haywood, Sacco and Vanzetti, lies about the I.W.W. and anarchism. Through the liberal corporate media we are constantly told lies and half truths about the labor movement, socialism vs. capitalism. Stalinist tyranny was our only image of socialism. Detractors of american corporatism are un-american stalinist demons, commies bent on destroying America's freedom. We're taught by the slave masters that the abolitionist is the slave driver. Predictably, peoples' history is not understood for the struggle that it was/is.

"Liberalism" - The near right solution

Liberalism is a pragmatic fusion of corporatism and socialism (see neo-fascist), a co-option of socialism by our menshaviks (ruling class minority) to pre-empt a Bolshevik (working class majority) revolution in America.   So, near right "liberalism" was born, wrought by necessity to save this system from itself and from such ACTUAL leftists as Emma Goldman, Eugene Debs and lately, Ralph Nader and the Greeens.  I like the way Gore Vidal explains the necessity for "liberalism", "The far right would have them killing you in your beds". Better change that to will Mr. Vidal.

When FDR was elected, before the New Deal's "liberal" reforms began to "work", parts of this country were in open rebellion, in the previous decade there were thousands of strikes and sit-downs, mother's with starving children were holding up grocery stores. New Deal Liberalism mollified the "army of surplus labor" that was taking to the streets and shutting down production. But liberalism is only palliative and somewhat ameliorative. It is not curative, it hides the cancer that, unchecked, unbalances the web of life.

Unregulated, this system breeds poverty as a casualty of war. Poverty is part of the process of capital accumulation - there are winners (who frequently cheat) and losers (some of whom don't know there's a game). Poverty is used to control inflation and more. Liberalism provides life support for this army of surplus labor, which, ingeniously, can then be blamed for it's own existence and for breathing at all.  Rascism is a diversion and a hobby.

Is this the best that can be done? As long as working people think they're impotent and the health of the economy is judged only in terms of it's effect on the ruling class, it probably is.  No, certainly it is. We've crossed a line - we now spend more on prisons than higher education. Right now in California 18 new prisons are under construction or on the drawing boards - the far right wants more - "The New Deal" is being repealed by gingrich and clinton.  

A necessary aspect of the liberal/conservative hustle is that its target audience (aka We The People) be ignorant of history. People's history is relegated to 1984's memory hole by corporatized "liberal" media, make happy - America good, America's designated enemies bad - NO radical analysis, blame the victim. The absence of historical context is what makes Americans unable to understand why things happen. As a result we give up OUR liberty to stop terrorism and underclass violence. We get the likes of ralph reed and yahweh instead of Jesus and Gaia. We get welfare repeal titled reform.

It is the nature of hypocrisy that the far right condemns "liberals" and "leftists" for their lack of "family values" while ignoring the conspicuous absence of them in the finance capital system they revere. It's quite easy to demonstrate that predatory capitalism is the primary modern cause of unlivable wages and high unemployment in the first place. Why that's true is explained in the business press, if you can decode it.  

The arguments of the far right (see proto-fascist) can be dismissed out of hand until they address the essential ethical, logical and moral bankruptcy of their position.

They don't.
They won't.
They can't.

Workers with money buy stuff. When lots of workers have money the makers of stuff raise the price of the stuff because they can, "whatever the market will bear" is the mantra.  When the cost of all that stuff goes up it inflates the money, the money is worth less.  Solution, have the federal reserve raise interest rates and shitcan a bunch of workers so they don't have money to spend.  Then the makers of stuff stop raising or lower their prices. Voila! inflation is under control. Wall street goes wild. Yet there is no serious mainstream discussion of this demonstrable ruling class responsibility for underclass woes, of this "structural unemployment". When is the last time the talking heads on the evening news uttered the words, plutocracy, oligarchy or even report clearly on this method of inflation control?

It's very simple, the owners of this world know that if citizens had free speech in the mass media they'd use it.  Very dangerous.  Liberalism makes the majority comfortable without it, on their journey from intellectual knee to prostrate, they won't miss standing up too much.

ORGANIZE

P.S.

 Passionate Appeal to get off Your Dead Lazy Ass and call your Elected Representatives
ABOUT SOMETHING.

You didn't have to be a witch to be caught up in the inquisition. And you didn't have to be a Jew to be rubbed out by the holocaust. In the post cold war world order it's not whether you're red, black, brown, yellow, white - gay or straight, right or left, christian or pagan. Racism etc. are tools, differences to be exploited for their divisive value. Its up or down in unbridled late stage capitalism. Look at life for workers in Haiti, El Salvador, Rwanda, Zaire, Guatemala, Mexico, China, East Timor and Indonesia and for examples of what "free market competition" is all about - FOR WORKERS IT'S A RACE FOR THE BOTTOM.

Liberty, justice and freedom in the new world order depend on whether or not workers (the majority) can understand what their interest is. It's about whether or not you can comprehend who is for you and against you. And finally, whether WE can come together somehow and create a SUSTAINABLE system before they repeal EVERY piece of progressive legislation of last 100 hundred years.