“If you don’t violate someone’s human rights some of the time,” revealed an American counter-terrorism official in 2004, “you probably aren’t doing your job.”
Professor Anita Inder Singh writing in the Guardian/UK
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Anti anti-fascists scanning the ether for signs of dissent, disloyalty, and defeatism.
Occasional thoughts about political life in 21st century America
Anti anti-fascists scanning the ether for signs of dissent, disloyalty, and defeatism.
Premature Anti-Fascist
Returning to America from the Spanish Civil War, veterans of the International Brigades who fought against Franco in the republican cause were said to have been branded as Premature Anti-Fascists. That is, they opposed fascism before World War II, before everyone was supposed to oppose fascism, and therefore were likely to be communist subversives, presumptively disloyal because they fought the fascists too soon. Whether the US government actually used the term itself is now contested by anti-communist historians (although it would be difficult to deny the actual persecution of communists and dissidents in 20th century America). I use it for the name of my blog because, in my darker moments, I worry about the proto-fascist tendencies I see at work in America and because, whether the US government or the Brigadists themselves invented the term, it seems to me a bittersweet badge of honor. For more on the Lincolns, see Peter Carroll, The Odyssey of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade.
What Price Empire?
PAF recommends for News:
PAF's Book List: Some Recommendations
- Walter Hixson, The Myth of American Diplomacy: National Identity and US Foreign Policy
- James Carroll, House of War: The Pentagon and the disastrous rise of American Power
- James William Gibson, Warrior Dreams: Violence and Manhood in post-Vietnam America
- H. Bruce Franklin, MIA: Mythmaking in America
- Jerry Lembke, The Spitting Image: Myth, Memory and the Legacy of Vietnam
- Susan Faludi, The Terror Dream
- Andrew J. Bacevich, The New American Militarism
- David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism
- Larry Everest, Oil, Power, and Empire
- Stephen Kinzer, Overthrow
- Michael Isikoff and David Corn, Hubris
- Thomas Ricks, Fiasco
- Chalmers Johnson, Nemesis
- Stefan Halper and Jonathan Clarke, America Alone
- Gary Dorrien, Imperial Designs
- Malise Ruthven, A Fury for God
- Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon, The Next Attack
- Sara Diamond, Roads to Dominion
- Chip Berlet and Matthew Lyons, Right-Wing Populism in America
Blog Archive
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2008
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January
(24)
- Meanwhile, back in Jesusland
- Edwards: no more occupation
- To destroy al Qaeda in Iraq, end the Occupation
- Breakfast in America
- US War Crimes and the Return of the Winter Soldier
- Bush continues to build tensions with Iran, despit...
- another message from Necrophiliacs for Huckabee
- Bill O'Reilly is a thug?
- Surging to victory? Bullshit.
- Why not 'President McCain'?
- Zombies in Jesusland: I am Legend
- Classic British understatement
- Some historical perspective from a former president
- Why the world loves America
- Record number of US troops in Afghanistan
- Bacevich: Surge to Nowhere
- "Don't even think about it"
- 935 lies and a war that won't end
- Bush wants to lock us into long-term military occu...
- You and what army?
- Hillary and Bill spin Obama and Iraq
- Wolfowitz rides again
- "The Protocols of the Elders of Haight-Ashbury"
- Buck Turgidson McCain
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January
(24)