Shooting at Holocaust museum by fascist White Nationalist

...over at Stormfront there is debate over the actual importance or effectiveness of James Von Brunn's attack today.

There seem to be two threads, one now locked for security purposes and one still open. The nazi mods locked one because users may have made comments that heralded Von Brunn for his action while the open one had mostly posters taking a critical view of his attack.

The posts ranged from 1) the quasi critical,

"Utterly ridiculous, pointless...As I've been saying, a nationalist movement will only proceed once it becomes an INTELLECTUAL movement."

and another Stormfront poster (less critical)

"I just finished reading Mr. Von Brunn's book. From the beginning it captured me. It is full of startling fact and insights. The historical references to infamous events in world history and the real story behind the scenes were riveting. I recommend it to anyone who has the courage to rise above the MSM’s obviously false version of events.

I deplore the fact that an innocent man who was just performing his job as a security guard has been killed. His family and loved ones have my sympathy and prayer’s

The reason’s for Mr. Von Brunn’s actions are perhaps only known to him. The passion with which he writes and his history of activism leads me to wonder if this was intended to be a suicide. Mr. Brunn is very aware that the time left to save the White Race and America as he knew it is very short. Recent events and his advancing age may have been factors in his decision to go out with a bang."

2) adressing the futility of the action and seeing the attack as a set back for the White fascist movement:

"Senseless, violent actions such as what we witnessed today at the Holocaust Museum only sets back the White Nationalist movement."

3) to even wondering if Von Brunn was just now a wacko in his old age:

"I dont know what he was thinking today. What makes an old man get up in the morning and say, 'I am going to go and find the most public/sympathetic target I can find and launch the most IN-effectual attack EVER on it! Then I will cause as much issue as I can for everyone in the cause, and live through it, so that I can be held up for months or years afterward as a example of the 'smart lone-wolf'

I for one would like to thank his dumbass personally for all his help to us. So "Thank you Mr. Dumbass...!"

Does anyone know if he had Altzheimers? Possibly simple dementia?"

The Stormfront posts show that the fascists understand that by and large the current period is not conducive to armed attacks, and little benefit will come to them if there ranks carry out spectacular acts of terror - although ther are plenty among there ranks who thinka nd act otherwise, or do so in less visible ways. If one can stomach the crap on Stormfront we can see that plenty of the fascists are thinking strategically about movement building.

The liberal press is turning the two recent attacks/murders - Dr. Tiller and now at the Holocaust Museum and the murder of guard Stephen T. Johns - into a hysteria. Liberal commentators are presing for domestic terror policy to be enacted against the Right. While the attacks show the ongoing reality of fascist and racialist terror, an expanded and official policy to investigate and develop counter insurgency methods against the Right will be used against other "dissident" groups and any sector that refuses the authority of the State. This is the dilemma that civil libertarian groups raise and which has often led them to defend the legal "right" to unpopular speech.

It is these terror attacks that the State will use to strengthen its hand, or at the least the State will attempt to push forward legislation - or covert operations - to monitor and destablize threats. The Bush administration did this with DHS, the Patriot Act, FISA, etc, we will have to watch to see how the Democrats act.

What is important for anti-fascists is that these attacks, coupled with the continuing capitalist crisis, the growing right-wing backlash against the Obama administration, and the disarray of the Republican party, the importance is that we are seeing more clearly the possibilities of a renewed reactionary movement that may currently be tied to electoralism but demonstrating the potential for elements within it to become semi-autonomous with a break from the legal confines of the Systems politico-socio framework.

Nick Paretsky responds

from the comments section of, Capitalism in Crisis?
Holy cow. Just read the post about the redeployment of troops inside the U.S. for domestic counterinsurgency.

Well, anyway: Long-term ruling class strategies in wake of the financial meltdown

The immediate ruling class response is the bailout. There’s been talk in the business press about how the bailout signals the end of the neo-liberal, “free market” policy regime of the last 30 years or so. So far, it just looks like a huge, lumbering state capitalism, without any clear underlying paradigm shift in ruling class policy. But if the bailout is not successful at preventing implosion of the financial system, or even makes the crisis worse, as the Hudson piece argues, major ruling class debates may be in the offing over long-range strategies for managing the system, one issue being the role of the state in economic policy. As has been said many times before by others, their strategies have implications for what leftists do. And divisions within the ruling class can be an opportunity for a mass, radical left movement. (Hamerquist has written in the past about capitalist policy alternatives for dealing the crisis, such as a traditional reformist, social democratic approach vs a conservative “strong state” which intervenes in the economy without a popular, working class base, in the context of his theory of the secular crisis of capitalism.)

It might be useful to map out different positions emerging within the rc on dealing with the crisis, in event the financial meltdown really does require the ruling class to make a break with past policies. Among other things, this means looking at discussions taking place within the ruling class network of policy planning organizations, think tanks, research institutes, foundations, etc, which has played an important role in the past in the formation of state policy. These are organizations like the Council on Foreign Relations, Trilateral Commission, American Enterprise Institute, Business Roundtable, Institute for International Economics, and so on.

For example: Is this another “New Deal moment”? K. Phillips doubts it is, in the American Prospect article cited in the Bill Moyers interview. If this is true, reformist left politics will have tough sledding. But I think some sort of state interventionism is on the rc agenda.

Some rc ideologues are in fact talking in a “New Deal,” “social democratic” vein. They see this as chance to reassert the power of productive capital (industrial capitalists) with respect to the financial sector. NYT columnist Thomas Friedman is a visible spokespersons for this camp. His writings have been cited by some contributors to this forum as important rc statements on globalization. In recent columns he has been advocating the rebuilding of the U.S. manufacturing base using energy conservation and “green technologies.” For example, his Sept 28 op ed, “Green the Bailout.” His proposals are reminiscent of the reindustrialization” idea debated within rc circles during the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, in which the state would channel capital into the retooling of industry and rebuilding infrastructure; this time it is a “green” reindustrialization. I believe Friedman is involved with a number of policy formation organizations representing the internationalist wing of the rc, such as the Trilateral Commission, Council on Foreign Relations, and Bilderberg. So his utterances may reflect the views of a larger grouping within the ruling class, composed of real capitalists with power, and not just newspaper reporters. These would also be capitalists which have ties to specific geographic places, at the same time that they are at the helm of large multinational corporations with operations spanning the globe. This “green” reform program may go nowhere. Reformist policy options may face objective limits in the nature of contemporary capitalism. A “unitary executive” which uses force to restructure capital and society, without reformist “class compromise” politics, may be more likely. But the Friedman program is an example of a ruling class analysis of the crisis which revolutionary leftists should pay attention to.

Having just read the Army News article about a permanent domestic military presence being established under the authority of NorthCom for purposes of controlling “civil unrest,” I am reminded that a lot of ruling class strategizing for general management of the system is now taking place within the Pentagon and the other organs of the National Security State, alongside the older network of “civil society,” “private” capitalist think tanks which formulated and transmitted policy to the State. Mike Davis has said something similar in his writings on “the planet of slums.” I’m also further jolted into realizing that things are heating up and getting closer.

Nick Paretsky

Counter Insurgency at home?

and look, what timing! Just when the president, politicians and various economists start saying that the Apocalypse may just be around the corner if $700B isn't injected into the economy, the are starting a redeployment of troops into The U.S. who's main goal will be dealing with domestic disturbances.

From The Army Times,

"It is not the first time an active-duty unit has been tapped to help at home. In August 2005, for example, when Hurricane Katrina unleashed hell in Mississippi and Louisiana, several active-duty units were pulled from various posts and mobilized to those areas...

...But this new mission marks the first time an active unit has been given a dedicated assignment to NorthCom, a joint command established in 2002 to provide command and control for federal homeland defense efforts and coordinate defense support of civil authorities...

...They may be called upon to help with civil unrest and crowd control or to deal with potentially horrific scenarios such as massive poisoning and chaos in response to a chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear or high-yield explosive, or CBRNE, attack."

read more

Capitalism in Crisis?

the following is from a larger discussion between different individuals and organizations on the nature of fascism and the potentials and limitations of anti-fascist organizing. that discussion will be published in the near future, however, with the last few days events we wanted to put up this piece from D. Hamerquist.
________________________________________________________________

M. included this observation in his remarks on the current fascism discussion:

“The history of the left is littered with groups that have ended up in the metaphorical ditch after having hitched their ride to a supposedly impending crisis in the functioning of capitalism. It’s true that the past is often no guide to the future, but I’m highly skeptical of claims that capitalism is currently headed toward a major crisis.”

Despite M.s “highly skeptical” view, the events of recent days certainly look like a capitalist crisis and spokespeople for the system are commonly describing the situation in apocalyptic terms. Perhaps he thinks that it is just not a “major” crisis – only a slight “downward economic adjustment” in our corner of the global capitalist system, a momentary hiccup that we should look beyond. However this doesn’t explain why the major spokespeople for capital, accompanied by the flock of professional commentators on its workings, are uniformly describing the situation as a looming disaster for the entire global capitalist financial system and are bitterly debating the proposed remedies. Should they all relax? Has M. found some underlying limits on the problems that all of them have overlooked? Is this emerging bailout remedy that will cost a minimum of half a trillion dollars of public funds a stupid over reaction to some minor glitches? Is the palpable panic part of a massive attempt to confuse the more gullible sections of the people, including the small circles of revolutionaries and cover up some “adjustment”(s)? If so, what adjustments…and why cover them up?

There is no evidence of capitalist complacency in the current situation – but there is a good possibility that many left radicals will relax and snooze their way through it. I recommend that those who see the current situation as just “capitalists just being capitalist” make sure they understand the concept and the function of “leverage” and then google - ‘collateralized debt obligation’ and ‘credit default swap’. This should provide some recovery therapy for business as usual disorders on the left.

The essential problem is not that M.’s view has been overtaken by events - although it has. In my opinion his position was wrong when he wrote it some months ago as the current situation was just developing. Similar positions have resulted in similar mistakes since this type of argument became fashionable on the left some decades ago. I’m not arguing that an objective analysis of capitalism is unnecessary, but that analysis must look for the breaks and transformations in the structure of capital that will determine the environment for radical political work and set the potential for insurgencies. By emphasizing the elements of stability and continuity in capital and discounting the current financial panic as a planned manipulation, M. removes the imperative to develop a popular radical position for the issues of the day and tends towards confining strategic options to that long march through the institutions which has destroyed so much radical footware – perhaps he would spice it up with a little parecon.

This is not to deny there are some elements of validity in M.’s position. I assume it is a reaction against the strand of economic/historical determinism in the left tradition, particularly the self designated Marxist component, that ‘scientifically’ predicted the dual inevitabilities of the fall of capitalism and the success of communism. The mechanism to expedite the inevitable transition from capitalism to socialism was commonly located in the “boom/bust” capitalist business cycle. This supposedly would result in increasingly serious crises culminating in THE CRISIS where capitalism essentially collapsed. (I realize there are some more sophisticated expressions of the process, but this is its essence.)

Gramsci dealt with this issue in his criticism of Bukharin’s popularized ABCs of Communism, describing it as marginally useful as a morale booster for a working class movement that has experienced the class struggle as a string of defeats, but as“imbecilic optimism” for a revolutionary project that must create a future through organized and conscious struggle. (I love that term and will never miss an opportunity to use it.)

This crude economist notion of crisis was incorporated into the stage theory which defined imperialism as the final phase of capitalism, and saw WWI and the Bolshevik revolution as demarcating the “General Crisis of Capitalism”, the immediate prelude to international revolution. History developed differently. Official communist doctrine struggled with its crisis theory for a time, creating various subdivisions of the general crisis to explain the delay in its appearance. Following a brief resurgence during the 30s depression, the grand crisis theory faded into obscurity and was supplanted by the simple notion that capitalism would eventually succumb to an increasingly appealing “socialist” alternative. Of course we know what has happened to this pile of crap.

Crude determinist views of this sort reappear from time to time and present easy targets for ridicule by more sophisticated leftists. I’ve taken some shots myself. However, there is a potential for large mistakes in this reflexive criticism. Paradoxically, it can lead to a similar political posture to the one it criticizes, complacent reformist gradualism. The “imbecilic optimism” that treats eventual victory as guaranteed because time is on our side finds a functional equivalent in incremental reformism that hopes to hold on until capitalism bores itself into senility.

In its last years, STO attempted to develop an understanding of the restructuring of the capitalist labor process that was becoming evident in the U.S. and Europe. This involved taking another look at the issue of capitalist crisis. We began to draw a distinction between two notions of crisis, both of which can be located in Marx. The first was the cyclical boom/bust character of capitalist development. This has traditionally been the focus of the left which treated it in ways that parallel the treatment of the business cycle in official economics. The second notion of crisis, infinitely more important in my opinion and not included in official economic curricula, is the conception of crisis as a secular consequence of capitalist production approaching the limits of the law of value. It is important to recognize that neither of these notions equated crisis with collapse. The former notion was cyclical and to some extent self correcting. The secular crisis creates the conditions for development of countervailing forces on the left and the right, but does not ensure their success. Nor does it contradict the potential for various types of capitalist recovery. Following the Chairman, unless it is pushed, capital will not fall – where the broom does not reach the dust will remain. So let’s push a bit – and stay alert for other broom wielders.

At the time, Marx’s Grundrisse had only recently become available in English. Its extended “Chapter on Capital”– specifically pages 699-712 – was our primary reference point. I’ve referred to this material elsewhere, for example in the section on crisis in my piece of fascism – page 22-28 - and don’t want to repeat it here. Perhaps I should say that of the very few comments on that piece, a number singled out this passage as being rather useless. Nevertheless, I still think it is helpful to check out the Grundrisse passages, keeping in mind that they were written about capitalist limits as a global system at a point in time when capitalism was hardly even regional, barely developed in most areas and only clearly hegemonic in a few European countries.


I’d like to approach the problems with a quote that is very different from the one of M.’s that topped this piece. After citing the Grundrisse, Negri argues:

“This restive character of capital constitutes an ever-present point of crisis that pertains to the essence of capital itself; constant expansion is its always inadequate but nonetheless necessary attempt to quench an insatiable thirst. We do not mean to suggest that this crisis and these barriers will necessarily lead capital to collapse. On the contrary, as it is for modernity as a whole, crisis is for capital a normal condition that indicates not its end but its tendency and mode of operation.” (Negri & Hardt, Empire, p. 222).

In this view, as in mine, “crisis” should not be reduced to capitalist collapse, it is the new normality when capitalism has become global and no longer effectively has an “outside”. Of course, saying crisis is a “normal condition” is hardly sufficient, but Negri improves on M.’s position by focusing our attention on contradictions, paradigm shifts, disequilibriums, and transformations as the “normal condition” of the political terrain. This sets a much more productive framework for further analysis.

Let me make a brief excursion. Martin Nicolaus now is probably best known as the translator of the Grundrisse into English. Before this he had a brief flame out career in the New Left, starting with Weather and working through the BARU; RCP, CPML and some more exotic Maoists. (You can detect the Maoism in his introductory material for the Grundrisse.) I have no idea where he’s been for over a quarter of a century – probably some type of liberal like so many others. In any case, in the late sixties he had a widely read debate with Ernest Mandel, the Trotskyist economist and head of the 4th International. The topic was one of the ‘Where is X Going’ sort that Trotskyists favored. Nicolaus argued that colonial conditions were being imported into the metropolis and that the proper strategy was to bring the national liberation movement along with it. It fit with his thirdworldist Weather position of the period. We frequently used his essay in educationals as an illustration of a political mistake for not dealing with the contradictions within the U.S. working class, specifically the white skin privilege, and for essentially denying that the working class was a potential revolutionary agent in advanced capitalism. Of course, we regarded Mandel’s Eurocentric and economist trade unionist perspective as pure crap.

I’ve frequently thought since that there was more substance to the Nicolaus argument than we realized – possibly more than he realized. It fits very closely with the argument in Negri’s Empire”

“The Third World does not really disappear in the process of unification of the world market but enters into the First, establishes itself at the heart as ghetto, shantytown, favela, always again produced and reproduced. In turn, the First World is transferred to the Third in the form of stock exchanges and banks, transnational corporations and icy skyscrapers of money and command.” (Negri, Empire, 253-254.)

I think this notion of capital globalizing as both a cause of, and a response to the incorporation of the periphery is useful. In the first place it points to the mobility of capital, its increasing lack of ties to a definite place. In the second place it points to the exacerbation of political fractures that previously could be exported - remember the Cecil Rhodes comment that imperialism was essential to prevent 40,000,000 Englishmen falling into “bloody civil war” – it points to the import of populations and problems that previously could be externally quarantined.

Ultimately, I think, that the tremendous international mobility of labor will become the crucial element in the political conjuncture. This is where the working class is potentially on the offensive and where the ingredients of an internationalist perspective can find a social base. This is also one of the fault areas where fascist movements will emerge. Again, not conflating crisis with collapse, it is apparent that this labor mobility provides an element of the capitalist crisis. It challenges traditional methods of governing and labor discipline and any attempt to deal with it will necessarily undermine some aspect of capitalist hegemony or profitability.

However, the immediate manifestation of crisis is on the other side of the process, the internationalization of capital. There is a contradiction between the growing elimination of obstacles to the free movement of capital and the national state framework which still must mediate and arbitrate differences within capital to advance its overall class interests. Somehow this contradiction must be negotiated without undermining capital’s ability to respond to potential class challenges emerging from the mobility of labor and without providing too much fuel for an already existing challenge from the political right.

In the current case, global capital has created mammoth financial processes – consider the market in credit derivatives – that are largely opaque, immensely profitable, and also very risky. They are also outside the range of any national regulatory structure. Yet when they overreach, as they have, the problems must be confronted through fiscal (taxes) and monetary (credit expansion) policies through the existing state structures. When and if, as is certainly not unlikely, the problems and their solutions result in mass protests, the police and military response to them will also be administered through nations. (I’ve made this point elsewhere concerning the “War against terror”.) There is a tension between the political and economic interests of global capital and the national frameworks that field armies, raise taxes, and print money. This will result in recurring crises that must be countered by a radical left, not because capital will be collapsing into a revolutionary situation, but because it quite conceivably might be strengthened by dealing with its dilemmas and/or because a radical challenge from the right might preempt the historical stage.

I was going to write a bit more but I want to catch the Bill Marr show to see how Naomi Klein forces a situation that refutes her book into a substantiation of it.

D. H.

For further discussion of this piece on Three Way Fight, see the "Comments" below and also separately posted replies by Dave Ranney (posted October 2, 2008) and Juan de la O (posted December 27, 2008).

Why was the Marriott Targeted? by Tariq Ali

The deadly blast in Islamabad was a revenge attack for what has been going on over the past few weeks in the badlands of the North-West Frontier. It highlighted the crisis confronting the new government in the wake of intensified US strikes in the tribal areas on the Afghan border.

Hellfire missiles, drones, special operation raids inside Pakistan and the resulting deaths of innocents have fuelled Pashtun nationalism. It is this spillage from the war in Afghanistan that is now destabilizing Pakistan.

The de facto prime minister of the country, an unelected crony of President Zardari and now his chief adviser, Rehman Malik, said, "our enemies don't want to see democracy flourishing in the country". This was rich coming from him, but in reality it has little to do with all that. It is the consequence of a supposedly "good war" in Afghanistan that has now gone badly wrong. The director of US National Intelligence, Michael McConnell, admits as much, saying the Afghan leadership must deal with the "endemic corruption and pervasive poppy cultivation and drug trafficking" that is to blame for the rise of the neo-Taliban.

The majority of Pakistanis are opposed to the US presence in the region, viewing it as the most serious threat to peace. Why, then, has the US decided to destabilize a crucial ally? Within Pakistan, some analysts argue this is a carefully coordinated move to weaken the Pakistani state by creating a crisis that extends way beyond the frontier with Afghanistan. Its ultimate aim, they claim, would be the extraction of the Pakistani military's nuclear fangs. If this were the case, it would imply Washington was determined to break up Pakistan, since the country would not survive a disaster on that scale.

In my view, however, the expansion of the war relates far more to the Bush administration's disastrous occupation in Afghanistan. It is hardly a secret that President Karzai's regime is becoming more isolated each passing day, as Taliban guerrillas move ever closer to Kabul.
When in doubt, escalate the war, is an old imperial motto. The strikes against Pakistan represent - like the decisions of President Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, to bomb and then invade Cambodia - a desperate bid to salvage a war that was never good, but has now gone badly wrong.

It is true that those resisting the Nato occupation cross the Pakistan-Afghan border with ease. However, the US has often engaged in quiet negotiations with them. Several feelers have been put out to the Taliban in Pakistan, while US intelligence experts regularly check into the Serena hotel in Swat to meet Maulana Fazlullah, a local pro-Taliban leader.

Pashtuns in Peshawar, hitherto regarded as secular liberals, told the BBC only last week that they had lost all faith in the west. The decision to violate the country's sovereignty at will had sent them in the direction of the insurgents.

While there is much grieving for the Marriott hotel casualties, some ask why the lives of those killed by Predator drones or missile attacks are considered to be of less value. In recent weeks almost 100 innocent people have died in this fashion. No outrage and global media coverage for them.

Why was the Marriot targeted? Two explanations have surfaced in the media. The first is that there was a planned dinner for the president and his cabinet there that night, which was cancelled at the last moment.

The second, reported in the respected Pakistani English-language newspaper, Dawn, is that "a top secret operation of the US Marines [was] going on inside the Marriott when it was attacked". According to the paper: "Well-equipped security officers from the US embassy were seen on the spot soon after the explosions. However, they left the scene shortly afterwards."

The country's largest newspaper, the News, also reported on Sunday that witnesses had seen US embassy steel boxes being carried into the Marriott at night on September 17. According to the paper, the steel boxes were permitted to circumvent security scanners stationed at the hotel entrance.

Mumtaz Alam, a member of parliament, witnessed this. He wanted to leave the hotel but, owing to the heavy security, he was not permitted to leave at the time and is threatening to raise the issue in parliament.

These may be the motivations for this particular attack, but behind it all is the shadow of an expanding war.

reposted from Counterpunch