reaction of the little angry men

This piece is quite good; from Wilhelm Reich, it also seems to capture the contradictions in his own character and the manner in which his own life was a tormented combination of forces he did not necessarily understand. After all, he equated the Kafka conception of totalitarianism with the thoughts of Hannah Arendt without really seeing some missing pieces; or chose to ignore them. His own support of General MacArthur in the Korean War, commander of U.S. forces,who wanted to go beyond the Yalu River directly into China to pursue the North Koreans,shows how ideologies can change in the blink of an eye.Luckily, President Truman, wishing to avoid WWIII with China and maybe the Soviet Union ordered MacArthur to stop, otherwise who knows. At heart was a disdain for China and a lack of comprehension of the society, and a willingness to bandy around the word “fascist” without a coherent idea of its dynamics and its split off nature as a viral populism….

---I used to have esteem for you, Niall, and look at you now - idealistic, naïve and middle class. What aspect of life in this declining, austerity-era, elected dictatorship of a country do you liken to “leaping around effortlessly?” Even the small Chinese lady sat next to him senses something ridiculous is being said; she looks as if she should have a speech bubble next to her head saying “who’s this white guy?” No-one here is making any real attempt to understand the Chinese. Niall talks over the woman who is trying to explain to him the concept of an “eight legged essay”, one of the few genuinely interesting moments in the episode, and the camera merely zooms in on the presenter’s clownishly baffled face and cuts away to something else without coming to any kind of conclusion. The narrative here is “Chinese people are weird and alien, let’s just goggle at them like unusual museum exhibits, so we don’t have to take them seriously” Don’t worry, this documentary tries to say, China will soon descend into chaos, like Niall says it will, and then we can go back to feeling superior – thank god for that. ---Read More:http://cvgold.blogspot.ca/2012/03/furious-attack-on-niall-ferguson.html image:http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/arts-entertainment/oil-painting-ntdtv-competition-li-yuan-8658.html

Wilhelm Reich ( sse link at end) :Since fascism, always and everywhere, appears as a movement which is supported by the masses of people, it also displays all the traits and contradictions present in the average character structure: Fascism is not, as is generally believed, a purely reactionary movement; rather, it is a mixture of rebellious emotions and reactionary social ideas.

If, by being revolutionary, one means rational rebellion against intolerable social conditions, if, by being radical, one means “going to the root of things,” the rational will to improve them, then fascism is never revolutionary. True, it may have the aspect of revolutionary emotions. But one would not call that physician revolutionary who proceeds against a disease with violent cursing but the other who quietly, courageously and conscientiously studies and fights the causes of the disease. Fascist rebelliousness always occurs where fear of the truth turns a revolutionary emotion into illusions.

---Chinese artist Chen Wenling critiques the global financial crisis in What You See Might Not Be Real, on display at a Beijing gallery. The bull is said to represent Wall Street, while the man pinned to the wall represents jailed financier Bernard Madoff.---Read More:http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/pop_ups/08/entertainment_enl_1254222563/html/1.stm ---If such bases were overthrown and Mao’s thought was totally repudiated, the “real” China would hardly exist. In order to be objective to the historical significance of this period it is essential that the history of the Chinese Revolution (1921–1976) and Maoism must not be left only to the mainstream interpretation and market discourse. More importantly, the CR should not be evaluated or even denounced on the basis of the rationale of today’s economism, since the two are founded on completely different worldviews and ideological paradigms.---Read More:http://www.chineseupress.com/promotion/China%20Review/5-Li.pdf

…In its pure form, fascism is the sum total of all irrational reactions of the average human character. To the narrow-minded sociologist who lacks the courage to recognize the enormous role played by the irrational in human history, the fascist race theory appears as nothing but an imperialistic interest or even a mere “prejudice.” The violence and the ubiquity of these “race prejudices” show their origin from the irrational part of the human character. The race theory is not a creation of fascism. No: fascism is a creation of race hatred and its politically organized expression. Correspondingly, there is a German, Italian, Spanish, Anglo-Saxon, Jewish and Arabian fascism. The race ideology is a true biopathic character symptom of the orgastically impotent individual.

The sadistic perverse character of the race ideology is also seen in the attitude toward religion. Fascism, we are told, is the  arch-enemy of religion, and a regression to paganism. On the contrary, fascism is the extreme expression of religious mysticism. As such it appears in a specific social form. Fascism is based on that religiosity which stems from sexual perversion; it changes the masochistic character of the old patriarchal religions into a sadistic religion. It takes religion out of the other-world philosophy of suffering and places it in the sadistic murder in this world….

---The days of state sponsored art is gone, and now Chinese artists have a new task of social criticism. The emergence of the market economy in China, and the deconstruction of the welfare state forces the young artists of China to turn their scope inward and focus on the emerging social polemics, brought about by the economic reforms of the 1980's. Where as in the 1960's artists glorified the achievements of the Chinese revolution, now artists are once again called upon to defend their countrymen with their powers of representation, which often so lucidly brings to light the suffering of the people, and makes one understand the severity and paradoxical context in the complexity of the present “status quo”; a situation not yet clear to the masses caught between the imposed changes since 1979 against the ideals of 1949 ; not of their own making, in ways that only art can translate. ---Read More:http://www.artsrepublik.com/artculturalrevolution.htm

Fascist mentality is the mentality of the subjugated “little man” who craves authority and rebels against it at the same time. It is not by accident that all fascist dictators stem from the milieu of the little reactionary man. The captains of industry and the feudal militarist make use of this social fact for their own purposes. A mechanistic authoritarian civilization only reaps, in the form of fascism, from the little, suppressed man what for hundreds of years it has sown in the masses of little, suppressed individuals in the form of mysticism, top-sergeant mentality and automatism. This little man has only too well learned the way of the big man and now gives it back, enlarged and distorted. The Fascist is the top-sergeant type in the vast army of our sick civilization. One cannot with impunity beat the tom-tom of high politics before the little man. The little top-sergeant has outdone the imperialistic general in everything: in martial music, in goose-stepping, in giving orders and obeying them, in the deadly fear of thinking, in diplomacy, strategy and tactics, in uniformed strutting and in medals.

In all these things a Kaiser Wilhelm appears as a poor bungler compared with Hitler. When a “proletarian” general covers his chest with medals, on both sides, and from the shoulders to the belt, he demonstrates the little man trying to outdo the “real” great general. One must have thoroughly studied the character of the suppressed little man and must have learned to see things as they take place behind the facade, if one is to understand the forces on which fascism is based. In the rebellion of the masses of abused people against the empty niceties of a false liberalism (I do not mean genuine liberalism and genuine tolerance) the character layer of the secondary impulses was expressed.

One cannot make the Fascist harmless if, according to the politics of the day, one looks for him only in the German or Italian, or the American or the Chinese; if one does not look for him in oneself; if one does not know the social institutions which hatch him every day. One can beat fascism only if one meets it objectively and practically, with a well-grounded knowledge of the life proce

ADDENDUM:

New York Times (see link at end) ….What bothers Chinese authorities are sects like Falun Gong that insist on independence from state control. In the same vein, the problem with Tibetan Buddhism resides in an obvious fact that many Western enthusiasts conveniently forget: the traditional political structure of Tibet is theocracy, with the Dalai Lama at the center. He unites religious and secular power — so when we are talking about the reincarnation of the Dalai Lama, we are taking about choosing a head of state. It is strange to hear self-described democracy advocates who denounce Chinese persecution of followers of the Dalai Lama — a non-democratically elected leader if there ever was one.

In recent years, the Chinese have changed their strategy in Tibet: in addition to military coercion, they increasingly rely on ethnic and economic colonization. Lhasa is transforming into a Chinese version of the capitalist Wild West, with karaoke bars and Disney-like Buddhist theme parks.

In short, the media image of brutal Chinese soldiers terrorizing Buddhist monks conceals a much more effective American-style socioeconomic transformation: in a decade or two, Tibetans will be reduced to the status of the Native Americans in the United States. Beijing finally learned the lesson: what is the oppressive power of secret police forces, camps and Red Guards destroying ancient monuments compared to the power of unbridled capitalism to undermine all traditional social relations? Read More:http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/11/opinion/11zizek.html