Jeff Sessions: " Anglo-American heritage"

You don't have any idea what you're talking about, and you don't care.
You're just trying to avoid dealing with what Sessions meant by what he said - because it's as obvious to you as to everyone else.

And ignoring the issues of this thread.

Mine's not partisan. I am biased against all fascist political Parties. They get no benefit of the doubt, any of them.

Nothing that happened prior to my interval refutes any claim of mine.

That supports my description - remember when you had a hard time naming a racist Dem politician who switched Parties?

Which was exactly when Reagan decided the Democratic Party had left him. Reagan didn't do a 180 like Johnson - he doubled down on his appeals to white bigotry instead.

Reagan opposed it. And he blamed the Democratic Party for it. That's what he meant by the Democratic Party "leaving him".

Reagan is famous for saying that Jefferson Davis was a hero of his. There is no reason to doubt his claim - and no mystery about the Anglo-American heritage Jefferson Davis represented, and Jefferson Beauregard Sessions was named in honor of.

 

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I'm just a Brit who occasionally observes the US political scene (with varying degrees of horror, only matched but that which confronts me when I look at our own) but I find it very hard indeed to believe that either of the main US political parties is "fascist".

Wiki describes fascism as "a form of radical authoritarian nationalism, characterized by dictatorial power, forcible suppression of opposition and control of industry and commerce". I see no evidence that the Republican party is wedded to dictatorial power, (even though Trump may be, he is not typical of Republicans, so far as I can see), nor do I see any evidence of attempts to suppress political opposition by force, nor do I see any sign that in the USA (of all places!), industry and commerce are controlled by a political party - if anything rather than other way round, I should have thought.

Do you really mean fascism? If so I'd be interested to see how you justify the use of the term.

 

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Your Wiki "description" is sort of ok, dubiously acceptable, as far as it goes, but it doesn't come near sufficing as a definition - you can't use it like that.
For starters, it fails to distinguish fascism from authoritarian government generally - such as an absolute monarchy, or a Pharoahnate, or a Maoist totalitarianism. China under Mao was certainly not fascist, I hope you agree.
So there's obviously something missing or even wrong with it, no?

Interestingly, considering the US propaganda efforts to destroy the term "fascist" and render it meaningless in public discourse, Wiki there reads like a media handout from the Republican Party intellectual wing: notice for example the elision of any reference to capitalist corporate influence in particular, central among the defining characteristics of fascism. Notice the absence of any reference to atavistic myth, racial or ethnic superiority, religious or quasi-religious belief, or militaristic focus.

More to the point, by that description there would be no such thing as a fascist Party except one already in power - only after taking power can all that oppression and control characterize the entity.

So you have essentially defined the Republican Party as not fascist, regardless of its agenda or ideology or established and customary behavior, simply because it is only a Party, in the US, so far. I cannot argue against that, except to note that the fascist Parties and fascistic movements of Italy, Germany, Spain, Argentina, Chile, and others on the type specimen list, did not fit that description either - until after they won.

That's a bit too late, imho.

 

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Exactly. The "other way around" characterizes fascism.

The rule of thumb - used to be part of a standard joke - is that you can recognize fascist governance by observing the dominance of government by capitalist corporate interests. Capitalist corporations run the government, or are the government, or are the interests for which the government acts, under fascism.

One can shorthand the situation: a fascist government is a capitalist corporation with an army.

It's obviously more complicated than that - the officials of the State can use power to gain control of capital and corporations to begin with, for one thing, and there's the whole racial and ethnic myth/ fearless leader / quasi-religious bag of horrors - but it works pretty well.

Certainly an absence of corporate capitalist structure and power strongly influencing a given government excludes the label "fascism".

(The joke went something like: "You see we have much superior government in the Socialist Soviet Union than in the Fascist West; in those places, the corporations run the government - here in the worker's paradise it's the other way around!")

 

On the contrary, I think there is a good case for describing Mao's China as a sort of fascism, except perhaps that it seems to have lacked the rampant nationalism that normally characterises it. And Stalin's USSR had almost all the elements of fascism, by the Wiki definition. It is in fact part of the standard commentary on the 1st half of the c.20th how these various dictatorships so much resembled each other, in spite of being supposedly at opposite ends of the political spectrum.

As for oppressive actions by fascist parties before they achieved power, these are notorious and one of the most chilling danger signs of these parties. Italy had its "blackshirts" and the Nazis their "brownshirts" (SA, later to be replaced by the SS). The role of these was to intimidate their opponents by physical force. We even had our own version in the UK at the time: Oswald Mosley's blackshirts*. We have more recently seen similar behaviour by fringe ultranationalist groups in the UK, such as the BNP.

To my knowledge, nobody in the Republican party has set up any paramilitary organisation of thugs to intimidate opponents in this way.

As for corporate influence, you are getting your history wrong, I think. I think the Wiki description quite correctly shows fascism as seeking to co-opt industry for the nationalistic goals of the nation: economic dirigisme. Whereas in the USA it is, as I said in my previous post, quite the opposite way around: the goal of parts of industry has been to seek to capture the right-of-centre political party. The Republican economic credo seems to be one of small-government, laissez-faire capitalism. This is the antithesis of the classic fascist approach, surely?




* amusingly sent up by P G Wodehouse as the "blackshorts", a group of young men who were acolytes of Roderick Spode, a Mosley-esque character in the Jeeves stories who is also, on the quiet, proprietor of a ladies underclothing shop in Bond Street. There is, I find, a splendidly unspoken, faintest hint of something kinkily gay about "blackshorts" which, in the UK at least, is in fact associated with some of this dressing up in uniform by the far right! Maybe it is our way of cutting these people down to size and ridiculing their strongman imagery. Anyway, Wodehouse was on it, back in 1938.

P.S. If you make the accusation that US propaganda has sought to redefine the term fascism, I think you should provide evidence for this remarkable claim. I do not get my picture of fascism from the US but from much closer to home and I see little wrong with the Wiki characterisation, or other similar descriptions elsewhere on the web.

 

I'm sorry, but that's nonsense. Mao forbade capitalist corporations, and socialized the entire economy. To this day the State owns the land in China. Mao established Left, not Right, totalitarianism.

Give them time. The threat of violence is ubiquitous. They have Blackwater, close alliances with various police forces, etc. Incidents abound. In 2000 a pack of thugs forced their way into the vote recount room in Florida and physically threatened the people counting the votes - shut down the operation, temporarily - for example.
It's much harder to do that in the US because the citizenry is armed - but the early attempts are there. IMHO it will be approached through the police forces.

Privately owned for profit capitalist industry, which is "co-opted" by essentially joining the government - and vice versa.
The illusion of State control over submissive industry may stem from the from the peculiarities of launching WWII by the famously fascistic Italy and Germany, and the militaristic focus of fascism generally. But most fascist regimes - Pinochet's Chile, Franco's Spain, etc - did not create that illusion. Even Italy and Germany showed otherwise if closely examined - the concentration camps were for-profit capitalist ventures. The common militarism - as with the US to a remarkable degree - is largely a means for corporate capitalists to receive taxpayer monies and coercion of markets in their favor.

And their success marks the rise of fascism in the US - the merger of capitalist corporations and governmental power.

That's all bs.
It would be unwise to accept such propaganda bs as description of reality. The Party that launched Homeland Security and invaded Iraq has no such credo, economic or otherwise. The Party that privatized its military contracting via no-bid cost-plus contracts has no such credo. The Party that sits Big Oil CEOs in its executive branch has no such credo. etc.

Fascism has no credo, no principles, no moral center. It rides on propaganda, lies and bullshits continually. Promoting memes such as a small-government credo is what its media wing is supposed to do. The US government has grown faster under each of the last four Republican presidents than under Democratic ones since WWII, for example. The slowest rate of growth recently was under Obama.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooperative

 

OK you have the Brooks Brothers riot in Florida 17 years ago, but what are these numerous other instances of intimidation? And where are the paramilitary organisations akin to Mao's Red Guards, the SA, or Mussolini's blackshirts? A nebulous and unevidenced claim of "close links" with police forces does not cut it.

I see you continue to confuse, wilfully, influence of political parties on corporations, characteristic of fascist government, with the influence of corporations on political parties, which is a quite normal tendency, for all democracies everywhere - it's called lobbying. We may complain about undue influence but it would be naive to expect it not to occur at all and it is most certainly not evidence of fascism. Capture of branches of government by corporate interests is much to be deplored, but it is not at all what fascism was all about. It is ridiculous to claim that either Nazi Germany or fascist Italy were run for the benefit of business interests. They were, quite plainly, run to realise a very explicit - and quintessentially fascist - credo: the nationalistic expansionist and racial goals of their leaders and the parties that stood behind them. These goals had nothing to do with business.

I see you make an attempt to redefine fascism as a "merger of capitalist corporations and governmental power", but that is simply not what fascism consists of.

And I find it simply extraordinary that you deny the Republicans tend to espouse small-government and laissez-faire capitalism.

No, your contentions do not hold water. It seems to me you weaken your case against the modern day US Republican party and its undeniably unhealthy relationship with corporate America by making off-the-mark accusations that few will take seriously.

 

Again: Americans are armed, spread out, and much more difficult to treat in that manner.
They are also better prepared in other ways - the history of oppressing black people by exactly such means has made them wary. Never overlook race in American politics. The Anglo-American heritage of Jeff Sessions is not something the Anglo-Americans want to suffer themselves.

So that will come, if it does, far later in the disaster;

- meanwhile, the cyber and social media bullying is the modern analog anyway, much cheaper and reasonably effective, and you haven't overlooked that, eh?

No, I don't. I point directly at the qualitative difference between the Republican Party's relationship with capitalist corporations and what you call "lobbying".
The Kochs and Mercers and Cheneys et al are not "lobbying" the Republican Party. Goldman and Exxon and Chevron and Halliburton and the rest are not "lobbying" the Party when they sit in the chairs at Cabinet meetings and head Federal Agencies. They are using it as a tool. The Republican Party is not influencing them, overseeing them, or even operating independently of them.
The Republican Party does not engage in "economic dirigisme" over Exxon, or Halliburton, or Koch, or Fox, - it's the other way around.

And I find it extraordinary that any educated person would take Republican rhetoric and political campaign bs seriously, in the face of fifty years of the historical record and blatant current behavior.

And with the famous innovations and reliance of fascistic Parties on propaganda - the Big Lie, the Evil Enemy, the Glorious Myth, the Backstabbing Elite - a part of any educated person's education.

The Party that launched the Iraq War - the largest implementation of government contracting fraud in the history of the world, conjoined with the second largest expansion of the Federal government the United States has seen (only surpassed by the runup and launch of WWII) - is not a Party of small government and laissez-faire anything. When that same Party is now pushing for required citizenship identity papers and closed borders and militarized police and expanded copyright and expanded patent protection and monopoly-creaing mergers and expanded corporate control of labor backed by law and police (drug testing, time management, tracking and oversight, at will hiring and firing, union busting, etc etc etc),

when the Attorney General of a Republican administration, a man named after Confederate military heroes, invokes the Anglo-American heritage of sheriffs when speaking on official Republican Party policies for controlling the behavior of non-Anglo people in America,

surely any claim of "small government" and "laissez faire" oversight is a joke?

 

bingo. the republican propaganda machine is always that they want less government aimed at democrats (democratic) so they can implement more government for top-down control, primarily of the anglo-saxon variety as the elite or more entitlement than non-anglo. their logic is that if the elite are primarily republican, then by extension anglos will be favored in a trickle-down system. the main problem with this is, of course, not all are qualified which fuels other inconsistencies, hypocrisies and further propaganda.

it's so obvious, it's almost too lame.

 

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Detail: Click for original; it's a fair question.​

What, that we use the same language to say "law" and "law enforcement"?

I've acknowledged the "shared heritage"—

• The Anglican heritage of our legal code is well-known; our nation did emerge from the British Empire. Furthermore, was it Justice Breyer who went on to describe the Bowers decision as a mistake? It seems a fair description, though neither was it the first time the Supreme Court, really, really wanting to find a way to do something, reached back to English Common Law for precedent.

Meanwhile, the Anglo-American heritage of our law enforcement tradition includes murderous supremacism. (#30↑)

• The English-derived word can attend laws derived from England or anywhere else according to their post Greco-Roman structure. (#49↑)​

—but you chose to not address these points in any substantial manner; your nonsensical response at #31↑—

• "Our law enforcement heritage comes from the same place as our law heritage. Hence the word "sheriff" deriving from Old English."​

—is insufficient to reconcile and support your quotes on a different subject in the comparative context you have presented them. Simply making up pretenses in order to keep asking questions and not have to do any more work than randomly citing information you are not capable of properly discussing.

Citing presidential candidate Barack Obama chiding ethnic and religious discrimination as a question of habeas corpus, pointing back to our "Anglo-American law", also refers to the fact that we guaranteed the right as response against Anglican behavior. That is, if you want the common link in Obama's words from 2008, it is in our American response to the British violation of a principle described in Latin and ostensibly asserted on behalf of British people who were rich enough. Meanwhile, the principle was enshrined as law in a post-Greco-Roman framework spun by French philosophers.

Where Mr. Obama's words overlap with the Attorney General's is in recalling and accounting for supremacism; a white vice presidential candidate was rattling against habeas corpus according to ethnic and religious labels—in other words, advocating white supremacism—and demonstrating in that argument the corruption one must guard against. The future president offered a reasonable demonstration for one aspiring to recite and affirm the oath of the American presidency.

That is to say, where overlap can, in fact, be described, only reinforces the point that the Anglo-American heritage of our law enforcement tradition includes murderous supremacism.

Meanwhile, Senator Obama's statement is precisely suitable to its occasion: I have acknowleded direct statutory lineage, but you skipped over that part. Mr. Obama describes what should not be a difficult vote; like the antisodomy rules the Supreme Court sought in English common law, so also is habeas corpus centuries old, and reminding the United States Senate that it should not be difficult to fail to violate the Constitution in a question that has ostensibly lain settled for centuries is the sort of duty a senator ought to be able to attend as a matter of reflex.

And none of it has anything to do with what Jeff Sessions said.

That you can't offer any useful thesis, that pretentious and incompetent cowardice is what you bring in lieu of proper argument, is functionally problematic, Vociferous, because people are uncertain what to tell you when you just keep asking questions in a manner that informs us specifically that you still don't get it. Think of it this way: It is not so much a proposition about, "if you can't admit that apples and roses are both plants that are red", but, rather, the question of what red roses and red apples have to do with each other; shared heritage (and attributes) aside they're not the same thing.

Meanwhile, you need to stop making things up. At some point, you need to be able to offer some manner of affirmative argument; you have thus far failed to do so.

The outrage would have something to do with answering Mr. Fish↱ by proudly raising a hand and declaring to do one's part, especially since the point of doing so is to be seen; then again, people just don't feel like wasting their outrage. Seriously, it's Jeff Sessions. If we bathe in outrage every time the known supremacist says something supremacist, we could dedicate our lives to it until he finally leaves the human species that it might repair the damage he has done.
____________________

Note:

Mr. Fish. "Not OKKK". Clowncrack. 30 November 2014. Clowncrack.com. 20 March 2018. http://bit.ly/1gCpL6f

 

You rule out the police - ok:

In the Minneapolis StarTribune Tuesday a letter from a history teacher in the Edina, Minnesota, public schools asking the paper to please refrain from carelessly reprinting the "propaganda" (his term) put out by the American Heritage Institute about the curriculum in those schools, as they did last March 9.

The reason? The harassment and threats directed at his fellow teachers in consequence of that item - given the imprimatur of the "respectable" media - spreading through the Republican mediasphere and inciting the Republican thugs. The school system has been forced to pay for extra security, the teachers feel under siege, there is a credible threat of violence interfering with the normal school day.

Similar events are common, throughout the US.

Meanwhile:

I do not "define", but describe that aspect or characteristic of fascism - a necessary feature. And the description is accurate, as you can read in Mussolini's description (that's where I got it) or observe in the workings of known and agreed fascist States.

No, it isn't. It's an observation of fact. They even set up their slave labor and murder camps as capitalist business and for-profit industry. Imagine Oskar Schindler in Mao's China during the Cultural Revolution.

Allow me to direct your attention away from the propaganda or rhetorical goals and toward the established economic structure and actual operations of the German, Italian, Spanish, Chilean, Argentinian, Philippine, Honduran, Guatemalan, El Salvadoran, Paraguayan, et al, fascist States. Even during war.

There's a folk proverb: the greatest trick the Devil pulled was persuading people he did not exist.
One immediate, emergency danger of the rise of fascism in the US Republican Party is from the success of the past three decades of media effort in deflecting the word "fascist" away from its ascension to power, by destroying the meaning of the term. It's a greater loss than "liberal", imho. The media cannot talk about him with pith and precision because they're missing key vocabulary. This was a major factor in the ease with which Trump - a stereotypical fascist demagogue with a reasonably strong resemblance to Mussolini, somebody who should have rung the warning bells of every older adult white male in the country - rolled the media. They simply couldn't talk about him efficiently - their vocabulary has been crippled.

 

So on topic: Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III, Attorney General of the United States,
raised and educated entirely in Jim Crow Alabama, then captain rank in the Army Reserve,
worked most of his adult life as an attorney in Alabama courtrooms,
can work "Anglo-American heritage" into a public speech
addressed to a convocation of sheriffs
in slave-built Washington, DC
including as a major topic the control of laborers immigrant and imported for capitalist corporations,
via detainment and walls and coercion and violence,
in the southern United States

and expect to see his communicated meaning, the policies he has clearly advocated and clearly indicated the US Federal Government will support, described as "conservative", "Republican", "rightwing", "administration", and so forth.

Because those are the words the respectable media are allowed, the code they are required use.

 

What, academic use of "objective" too daunting? Sorry, I'll try to dumb it down.
He meant what everyone else means when they say Anglo-American heritage.
Your character assassination and guilt by association are fallacies.

The issue where you pretend Republicans are the only racists?

Can you cite a reference for your use of "fascism", or are you just making it up as you go along?

Nothing except the existing trend that didn't deviate when your arbitrary time frame began.

So no one can advocate for more local power because "states' rights" was once used to defend slavery?
Or is it just that you prefer centralized power?

Really? Same language? That's the best connection you can make between law and law enforcement?

 

The conspiracy theories that run rampant.

 

You are incapable of using "objective" correctly, in any context. You don't know what it means.
Meanwhile, the issue was meaning, not truth.

Of course - in that context, referring to sheriffs in the Jim Crow south, any American would mean what he meant. Agreed.

So we are agreed on the events of my time frame - the Republican Party succeeded in acquiring the formerly Democratic Party's white racist voting bloc, especially in the Confederacy.

I never did.

"States' rights" was and still is used as a code term to defend the racial oppression of blacks by whites - famously. That's what Reagan was doing, for example. That's what it was used for during Jeff Sessions entire childhood, education, and professional career in Alabama.

 

It's more than you've shown yourself capable of providing. Meanwhile, your own homework is your own job. Nobody is surprised that you are simply incapable of backing up the things you say. We are already quite aware that you don't know what you're on about. That you refuse to write your own arguments, and can only scrap post hoc trying to riff off what other people say, is not a mystery.

So whether you're just a lazy troll or actually, genuinely so ignorant, people aren't going to rush to write your stupid theses for you; at some point, you need to do the work yourself.

It's not so much a question of sinister or stupid; rather, it is a consideration of which manner of stupidity we encounter, to wit, the one by which you think you are smart, or the one by which you think you are right.

Meanwhile, you might wish to consider the wisdom of popping off with dumb lines↑ about who and what you can't take seriously when, in truth, you don't have a clue what you're on about, though it is also true nobody will be surprised if you pretend that notion too complicated to comprehend.

 

I gave you the definition here: http://www.sciforums.com/threads/jeff-sessions-anglo-american-heritage.160544/page-3#post-3510243
I can't help you if you refuse to learn.

No one was referring to the Jim Crow south, except you. Why are you so fond of it? You certainly seem to want to interpret everything through that lens.

No, the preexisting trend shows that they were moving toward voting Republican long before the Democrats gave up Jim Crow.

So people can only advocate for a big federal government because anything else if a dog whistle. Cute. Partisan nonsense, but cute.

I already gave you the historical background on both Anglo-American law and law enforcement. I can't help it if you just deny arguments out of hand. It's equivalent to just yelling "nuh-uh!"
When I asked if you could even admit the two shared a common heritage, you just ignored it: http://www.sciforums.com/threads/jeff-sessions-anglo-american-heritage.160544/page-3#post-3509180
So instead of answering what should be a simple question, that any intellectually honest person could easily answer, you choose to play character assassination games. And then you wonder why I can't take you seriously. Hahaha!

 

Nope, it just makes it hard (and generally inadvisable) to use that term.

It would be similar to a case where an activist wanted to advocate for freedom of speech, and to do so, used the word "nigger" (or "kike" or "cunt" etc) in every sentence. "But it's my right to say nigger! The First Amendment guarantees it nigger! I am not a racist just because I advocate for free speech nigger." People would assume he was in fact a racist even though he claims he is not. (And they would likely be correct.) Thus, best to use a different word if your goal is truly freedom of speech.

 

Jeff Sessions was. That was the entirety of his Anglo-American heritage, specifically and especially including sheriffs.

So?
The Democrats were moving toward giving up Jim Crow long before they gave up Jim Crow. Then they went for it - 1964. The Republicans were moving toward defending Jim Crow and white racial bigotry long before Nixon showed them how. Then they did it - 1968.

I didn't say you were incapable of using the alphabet to find things in a dictionary.
Meanwhile, the issue was meaning - not truth. Meaning. What Sessions meant by what he said, and was understood to mean.

Silly. "States rights" may sometimes be a dog whistle (it's more of direct label - pretty much everyone can hear it), but many other terms exist in English.
If you, yourself, genuinely believe one cannot advocate for small government without using racist dog whistles, you might want to re-evaluate your viewpoints in general.