“These anti-democratic forces will use fear, chaos and hatred…” Chris Hedges

“At no period in American history has our democracy been in such peril or the possibility of totalitarianism as real. Our way of life is over. Our profligate consumption is finished. Our children will never have the standard of living we had. This is the bleak future. This is reality.” 

…

“There are powerful corporate entities, fearful of losing their influence and wealth, arrayed against us.  They are waiting for a moment to strike, a national crisis that will allow them, in the name of national security and moral renewal, to take complete control. The tools are in place. These antidemocratic forces, which will seek to make an alliance with the Christian Right and other extremists, will use fear, chaos, the hatred for the ruling elites, and the specter of left-wing dissent and terrorism to impose draconian controls to extinguish our democracy. And while they do it, they will be waving the American flag, chanting patriotic slogans, promising law and order, and clutching the Christian cross. By then, exhausted and broken, we may have lost the power to resist.” Pp 189

Hedges, Christopher: Empire Of Illusion (New York: Nation Books 2009) pp 145, pp 189

Propaganda: “Foolproof Against A Reality Which The Movements Promised To Change…” Hannah Arendt

“The advantages of a propaganda that constantly “adds the power of organization” to the feeble and unreliable voice of argument, and thereby realizes, so to speak, on the spur of the moment, whatever it says, are obvious beyond demonstration. Foolproof against arguments based on a reality which the movements promised to change, against a counterpropaganda disqualified by the mere fact that it belongs to or defends a world which the shiftless masses cannot and will not accept, it can be disproved only by another, a stronger or better, reality.”

Arendt, Hannah. The Origins of Totalitarianism. 1948: Harcourt, Brace, New York (pub. 1979) Pp 363

“Social Transformations That Threaten Without Enlightening:” William Brustein

“”It can be said of such strata [the lower middle class] that they are less actors than acted upon by social transformations which threaten without enlightening them; that they are dependent, vulnerable, and politically reactive under stress; and that, lacking a preexisting political church which might explain their plight to them, their instinctive response to dangerously stressful social change is to support those candidates and movements who can most effectively promise them that such change will be stopped.”"

William Brustein, The Social Origins Of The Nazi Party 1925-1933 Pp 7

“HITLERIAN REVELS IN MADISON SQUARE GARDEN:” William Goldston

“Organizations such as William Dudley Pelley’s Silver Shirts (SS) attracted thousands of members with a program of frank Fascism and anti-semitism. Father Coughlin… had organized the Christian Front as a Jew-baiting fascist group whose members held rifle practice weekly at their camp in New Jersey. Fritz Kuhn’s German-America Bund was able to attract 20,000 people to its Hitlerian revels in Madison Square Garden.”

Robert Goldston, The Great Depression: The United States In The Thirties (New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1968). pp 237

“HOW SHOULD WE JUDGE THE POTPOURRI OF XENOPHOBIC, RACIST, AND HYPERNATIONALIST MOVEMENTS NOW IN THE NEWS?” William Brustein

“Could another racist, xenophobic party come to power today? The logic of the argument presented here leads me to answer yes: evil may be the horrifying outcome of rational politics. If average Germans had known in 1932 what they new in 1945 about the consequences, of Nazism, the Nazi Party would never have attracted a mass following. The Nazi Party skillfully cloaked its aims until it had achieved power. Many present and future demagogues may similarly masque their message of hate. It is unlikely that we can always detect evil before it reveals itself. How should we judge the potpourri of xenophobic, racist, and hypernationalist movements and parties that are now in the news?”

William Brustein, The Social Origins Of The Nazi Party, 1925-1933 (Yale University: New Haven 1996) pp 182

Confused? Don’t Be Confused. Take Back Our Language.

-Definitions for a New World Order: takebackourlanguage.com, 2008

THERE IS NO WAR: Our Misuse of the Term Masks Worse Crimes and Abuses

There Is No War.

Some recent wars: War on Poverty. War on Drugs. And, no shit, a recently declared War on Global Warming. War on you. War on Christmas. War on Mr. and Mrs. America. War on the Religious Right. War. What manner of war be these?

War on Terrorism. War on Terror.

“Terror” used to be for “B” movies posters and off-hand references to the French Revolution. It’s not just for movie posters anymore. Virginia, particularly around the Williamsburg area, was a Battleground State.

We are certainly at a loss as to what to make of “culture war.” We can only conclude that a large number of Americans are very, very angry with us, and have “declared war” against us. Apparently this is because we don’t sufficiently hate; you and I don’t faithfully, ardently and harmoniously hate gays, central Americans, Muslims, the “liberal media” and sundry other people and “cultures.”

We really don’t know how to situate War on Terror in our consciousness. No more than a Culture War on Ourselves, or our culture. Our avowedly moral and patriotic neighbors have declared war on us. What are we to do with this? Take up the lethal Arms that the right insists are our right? We will Take Up Words and endeavor to recapture the contested Territories of meaning and common understanding. We hope you will join us in taking back our words.

If this is an “armed conflict” or something, if it is “war,” then what the fuck, man? Watcha gonna bring? At the very least, we could “render extraordinarily” and imprison the “architects” of this war, spirit them away overseas, with no access to due process. Shall we name one? Newt Gingrich. We could supply him with a “warrior” name. How about pseudo-Lizard? If he would prefer to be called Newton we could throw apples at his head. I think the name derives from “New-Town,” actually.…  but carry on, word soldier.

Wars declared against some(thing) that cannot be made war upon are ridiculous. (Please see our Essay on C.E.R.N.’s Hadron Collider, dated 01 August, 2008  with attention to people, property and organizations, such as Blackwater and the Department Energy of the Federal Government, that are not “entities” and do not exist.) Such usages are sticky, inescapable nightmare solecisms. They are irreversible up-endings and obliterations –ob-literations- of meaning and language.

These are “wars” that can never begin, and never end, because they can never exist. They are grotesque, Kafkaesque perversions. They are absurd, like the Russian absurdist literature of Bulgakov and Gogol.

This is such a deep contradiction. It is such an overwhelming maw of deception and erasure of meaning that it is hardly possible to speak of it. But lets.

Bringing to bear a term of reference that has no meaning to a situation is a hallmark of the appropriation of power. It renders the term itself ridiculous. It steals away the term, the meaning, and the language itself.

It casts the situation itself into a dangerous realm of (not)language, that is no longer comprehensible. The rules of language, of thought, and of understanding that are true and proper to the situation are erased: stolen. All reference to reality –especially any sort of shared, common discourse about reality- is lost.

The language we have used to mutually understand reality is vaporized. The situation itself becomes indescribable, unknowable, impossible to understand and discuss, and horribly, indescribably dangerous.

What are Wars?

Wars are declared, among sovereign nations, internationally recognized as belligerents. There are, truly, “laws of war” that are understood among potential and actual belligerents in actual and potential wars. There is a common language among the civilized. Check it out. Investigate the Hague and the Geneva Convention and post your conclusions and important links here. Lets define this.

Proper, commonly understood terms like these have arisen within an international commitment to resisting illicit, unallowable nationalist aggressive ambitions. They do not have correct meaning as explanations or justifications for the tyrannical, aggressive violence of the United States abroad.

Okay, so it isn’t a war. No War on Terror.

Our Bush presidency, and it’s aspiring successors, claim they conduct their aggressions abroad and their outrageous domestic transgressions according to the “laws of war.” What are those “laws of war?” When there is no war?

What are “Laws of War?”

Humbly submitted for your consideration and review, these are the laws of (not)War:

When there is a (not)War, anyone can be defined as an Enemy Combatant. In fact, they must be. Everyone must be, since we are all Combatants in a (not)War.

Anyone must be held forever. In fact, they must be, because no-one can be a (non)Combatant in a (not)War. Because you are a (not)Prisoner of (not)War, you are a perpetual prisoner. Of the Laws of War. We cannot not hold everyone forever, and we cannot possibly release anyone who has been apprehended. You cannot (not) be a Combatant. You cannot be a (not)Combatant.

These appear to be the Transitive, Substitutive and Commutative Laws of (not)War.

Are these the Laws, of  (notWar), nothing less and nothing more than the Suspension or Contradiction of the Laws of Peace?

Perpetual war, or perpetual (not)war as we have paradoxically defined it, must be the inversion and erasure of the right-side-up Universe: the Universe that is not at (not)War. When the Universe is at non-combat, or maybe only at non-perpetual war.

Bizarro-Universe, Bizarro-War.

This must be the denial and repression of the state of the world when it is NOT insane, perverse, and incomprehensible. Not(in)Sane.

When war is perpetual, what are the Laws of the Universe of this (not)War?

When the “laws of war” are brought to bear, and the logic, in a situation in which there is (not)War, the contradictions, and the hypocrisy, and the… well, ,we’re just fuckin’ speechless, are(not) we?

We hear about our perpetual Imperative (note the root of the term), our moral compulsion, to conduct War on Terror, according to the “Conduct of war.” What we see is the horrific material expression of the “Conduct” of (not)War. Perpetual terror.

Look at this conduct. Is this how we ought to conduct ourselves? Is this how we ought to treat one another?

When we are at War with Terror, and the “laws” are the “laws of war,” then we are all terrorists. We must all suspect one another as terrorists. We must all surveil, mistrust, and betray one another.

If you don’t think you are a terrorist, go to the airport and see how our public officials, the Homeland Security Agency, treat you.

When we are at perpetual (not)War, you are a perpetual prisoner of War. Absurd? Does this seem absurd? But horribly, portentiously true. This is the language and the method of fascism.

In the last century, writers –Word Warriors- reclaimed the human voice from the grip of fascism.

The absurd and the grotesque were subversive, discursive weapons taken up to reclaim the power of public speech. Do not overlook the desperate necessity of the literature of the absurd and the grotesque. Do not overlook or underestimate the power of fascism.

We submit:

Definition of War on Terror
-Definitions for a New World Order: takebackourlanguage.com, 2008

War on Terror: a “war (not)against the psychic effects of organized, deliberately caused fear of war-like acts of violence.”

How is this for a “working definition for a New World Order?”