The logical goal of the GOP/elite war on government is Tsarist Russia. A place where there are no laws, just the whim of the Tsar. A place where there is no local government, only the officials of the Tsar. A place where obscurantism is encouraged and practiced by the Tsar. A place where intelligence is looked at askance. A place where right wing mobs are paid to commit pogroms by political organizations funded by the Tsar.
For a long time, progressives have responded to Libertarian bullshit by saying "You want no government? Go to Somalia." But, I think that, given the Libertarian worship of people with too much money, what they are really saying is that they want the government to be replaced by the collective autocracy of finance capitalism. An autocracy of money, where no one is permitted to oppose the failed god-emperor of the Invisible Hand. A place very similar to the absolutist autocracy that was Tsarist Russia - the most backward, abusive country in 19th century Europe.
Perhaps, the epithet "fascist" is off-target for our elites. Tsarism was a brutal, corrupt, and bigoted police state with massive censorship. As Springsteen said: Poor men want to be rich men; rich men want to be kings. And a king ain't satisfied until he rules everything. I get more of a vibe of total superiority than murderous racism from the banskster Tsars. (Not so from their demented, hate-filled shock troops. But the Tsar, not the peasants set policy.) Below the fold, some vignettes from Tsarist Russia. Any similarities to the GOP vision for America are not accidental.
1. Unfair taxation
To open with a relevant anecdote, immediately after Tsar Alexander II freed the serfs, the following events occurred:
an imposing group of (landowners from Tver)...composed an address to the Emperor which appeared to him in its radical humanity as little short of a challenge...it was suggested that since all the subjects of the Emperor were now free men, all must be equal in the eyes of the Crown, sharing equally in the privileges and the duties of full citizenship. Above all, it was clearly wrong that the whole burden of taxation should fall upon the laborer while nobility and gentry went almost scot free: "Sir, we consider it a mortal sin to enjoy such benefits at the expense of others. It is indeed an unjust order of things when a poor man must pay a ruble while a rich man does not pay a kopeck. This might well have been tolerated in the days of serfdom. But now we are being turned into parasites and drones...We humbly beg Your Imperial Majesty to permit us to assume responsibility for certain taxes."
All (signatories) were seized at the Tsar's command and briefly imprisoned in the fortress of St. Peter and St. Paul. (Tsar) Alexander, instead of thanking God that among his loyal subjects some were eager to share in the regeneration of the country, was angered.
- Edward Crankshaw, The Shadow of the Winter Palace
America's tax policy is approaching the peasant expropriation of Tsarist times. Just as then, morally responsible rich people asked to be taxed fairly. The response from the autocratic ruler was: shut up and butt out. Much the same as the response from the Wall St. autocracy that dictates our "government's" tax policy.
2. Political Corruption/Phony Government
After 30 years of increasing monetary corruption, political campaigning has been reduced to nothing but fund-raising - to the extent that no one but the rich or the opportunistic sell-outs (e.g., any GOPer and half the Dems) can be elected to Congress.
(the) third Duma (1907–1912) (was) dominated by gentry, landowners and businessmen. ...Due to its more noble, and Great Russian composition, the third Duma...was given a nickname, "The Duma of the Lords and Lackeys" or "The Master's Duma".
- Wikipedia {http://en.wikipedia.org/... Tsarist Russian Duma]
With Citizens United, we have our very own "Duma of the Lords and Lackeys". Unlimited, untracable money to prop up millionaires and lunatics (the GOP circus) and to blast away at the opposition.
After the 1905 revolution, the clueless Tsar, Nicholas II, was pressured into allowing an elected Duma. But it was completely powerless, except to talk.
...all ministers were accountable only to the Tsar, not at all to the Duma...the Duma was permitted to express its disapproval of individual ministers, or indeed, of the whole Government, but the Government need pay no attention. Individual members of the Duma could put questions to the the Prime Minister and other ministers, but there was no obligation on these to reply. The President of the Duma had the right of personal access to the Tsar to acquaint him with the Duma's hopes and fears, but the Tsar need do no more than listen, or appear to do so.
- E. Crankshaw, The Shadow of the Winter Palace
After this first Duma had talked for a while, the Tsar dismissed it. And this is exactly how the big money unleashed by Citizens United will treat any legislation put forward to stop the massive looting of our country and the complete destruction of the Bill of Rights.
In today's America, political parties are just different prime ministers picked and dismissed at the whim of the bankster Tsar. We can have a smart PM, like Witte (i.e., Obama); or a disengaged airhead PM, like Goremykin (i.e., Bush). But whoever we have, ALL the candidates have been vetted by the Wall St./Pentagon/Oil Industry. NONE of them will do anything for the people that harms this iron triangle of corruption.
3. Censorship
With the SOPA bill, we are perilously close to Internet censorship.
(Tsar Nicholas I) put on a permanent footing a standing censorship committee with virtually unlimited powers...All criticism of the government and administrative institutions, even at the lowest level, was forbidden. But even this was not enough. Soon all praise was forbidden too - on the grounds that it was lese-majeste for the Tsar's subjects to comment on government activity, even with approval...in 1851 all musical scores had to be submitted to the censor in case the notation concealed cipher messages .
- The Shadow of the Winter Palace
Is the paranoid lunacy of looking for secret messages in music any crazier than the ever-escalating Homeland Security Theatre and the imminent gutting of the Bill of Rights by the NDAA because "America is part of the 'battlefield' "? I don't think so. Both are equally delusional and equally enforcable.
And why are these delusions allowed to rule America? Because of the...
4. Refusal of media to report the truth
The "conspiracy of nonsense" between today's Beltway media and Beltway politicos was pioneered by the Tsars:
(in April, 1849) Nicholas delivered himself of one of those theatrical declarations in which rhetoric took the place of sense. To a deputation of nobles...he declared: 'Gentlemen, I have no police. I do not like them. You are my police.' He went on to explain that he made them responsible for the good behavior of all those in their charge - the serfs, that is to say...What went on in the mind of this monarch who commanded the most powerful police force in the world and made a confidant of its chief? What went on in the minds of those who listened with unquestioning acquiescence to what they knew to be a lie, thus forming with their master a conspiracy of nonsense?
- The Shadow of the Winter Palace
And the result for our country will be the same as the lack of media was for Tsarist Russia. The Crimean War (1854) was a tragedy of errors on both sides, but the reaction to the tragedy shows the difference between dead autocracy and living democracy:
The Allies (in the Crimean War - Britain and France), when all is said, to a considerable extent corrected their errors, and did in the end achieve what they set out to do, though far from home in a hostile land. The Russians failed absolutely. And a major factor in this difference was a free press to expose the true state of affairs.
(In Russia) there was no independent newspaper correspondent to tell the truth and to rouse public opinion. There was no public opinion. There was only the Tsar's command.
- The Shadow of the Winter Palace
Our corporate media has been worthless for some time. It failed to report the lies that led to the Second Iraq Invasion. It fails today to report the corruption, drug production, and war on women in Afghanistan. These useless endeavors have already cost thousands of American Lives and trillions of dollars. It fails to give the appropriate weight to the vast majority of public opinion (you know, that stuff there was none of in Tsarist Russia) to end the wars, tax the rich, and prosecute the crooks on Wall St.
5. A Militarized Economy
We have allowed corporations to ship our jobs to the third world. What is left at home is either squalid, low-paying jobs or military contracting. Guess what the Tsars thought industry was for?
Peter the Great had seen Russian industry of whatever kind as an integral part of the military machine which he needed to establish Russia as a power. Iron was for guns, textiles were for uniforms, and so on. To achieve this end, he set up a number of state factories, but preferred to farm out contracts to private entrepreneurs...Under the centralized autocracy...there was no room for private enterprise to develop...there were no guilds of merchants, tradesmen, and craftsmen to combine in pressure groups and build up middle class power...Peter's mills and factories... were organized not as the materialization of personal dreams, ambitions and greed...or the sheer delight in making things work, but rather as extensions of the central government, as sources of supply for the central power...Thus there grew up a tradition of the large factory, employing hundreds, often thousands...
(The task of the Captain of Mines) was not only to set production targets...and supervise the whole process of manufacture, but also to control the police and judicial officials within the mining towns, as well as the powerful detachment of soldiers who were responsible for maintaining security and order. The mining towns, in a word, were to all intents and purposes vast open concentration camps employing serf labor...Perhaps less than three percent of the total labor force were regular salaried employees. And of course, there was a perpetual influx of convicts. Some enterprises were staffed almost entirely by convicts. It was all one to the Captain of Mines, who was virtual dictator of all the souls under his command.
- The Shadow of the Winter Palace
Is today's China the model for this? And who kick-started the Chinese barracks/slave labor? Why American corporations. They are just following in the footsteps of the Westerners who swarmed into Tsarist Russia:
The young Nikita Krushchev, a child of peasants of the poorest kind, started work as a boy of fifteen in 1909. 'I worked', he once declared, 'at a factory owned by Germans, at pits owned by Frenchmen, and at a chemical plant owned by Belgians. There I discovered something about capitalists. They are all alike, whatever their nationality. All they wanted from me was the most work for the least money that would keep me alive'
- The Shadow of the Winter Palace
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Did I make my case? Are the memes "Tsarism" or "collective autocracy" of any value?
To keep the length under control, I'm going to stop here. Maybe later I will add some more similarities to Tsarism - how it affected individuals' lives and life opportunities; how it affected the life of the mind; etc.