A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford
Michigan’s Republicans are creating a legal model for American fascism for the benefit of Wall Street. The state’s new emergency financial management legislation “is the prototype for a host of laws designed to make government – the state – a compliant tool for a dictatorship of the most predatory sections of the ruling class.” Naturally – this being the United States – the first localities targeted for de-democratization are Black.
Michigan’s “Emergency” Financial Regime: What Fascism Looks Like
A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford
“There is nothing to stop the state from abolishing democratic governance in any of Michigan’s cities, if an emergency can be declared or created.”
Fascism is not all about jack-boots and guys with mustaches. It is a system of economic and social control. The particularities of fascism in any given nation grow out of the special dynamics of that country. Fascism in the United States will be blow-dried. And its legal and bureaucratic form will take shape in places like Michigan, where an innocuous sounding piece of legislation called the Local Government and School District Fiscal Accountability Act is the prototype for a host of laws designed to make government – the state – a compliant tool for the dictatorial rule of the most predatory sections of the ruling class. In 2011 America, that’s Wall Street, finance capital.
Michigan’s law allows the state to appoint emergency managers to nullify contracts, including labor agreements – which is what has unions upset. But the scope and intention of the law is much deeper and wider than simply anti-union. The legislation allows emergency managers to nullify the powers and authority of local governments of all kinds. One of its supporters gave the game away when he spoke of the need to impose a kind of “financial martial law public schools Benton Harbor
“Wall Street imposes instant emergencies on the larger society by starving cities and schools and the public sector in general, in order to strip down, privatize and commodify every asset in sight.”
Fascism always requires an “emergency,” a “crisis,” to justify the surrender of whatever citizen liberties previously existed. Its mass organizing principle revolves the “Other” – the scapegoating of a hated group that can be blamed for the emergency. Historically, in the United States, that “Other” has been Black people – although other “Others” have been added to the list. The U.S. has always been fertile ground for fascist politicking – in fact, I have long maintained that White Terror under southern Jim Crow was a peculiar form of American fascism.
Fascism is also associated with militarism and the national security state, which are certainly famiiar aspects of modern Americana. More importantly, the militarization of the inner cities has been an established fact since the mid-1960s. The proof is in the one million African Americans behind bars.
The “crisis” that justifies the outright abolition of democracy – beginning, of course, in Black America – is the crisis afflicting finance capitalism. Wall Street then imposes instant emergencies on the larger society by starving cities and schools and the public sector in general, in order to strip down, privatize and commodify every asset in sight. Michigan's fascist model will doubtless be duplicated across the nation, as Wall Street moves to rule directly, through its emergency managers, by one name or another. The permanent emergency has begun.
For Black Agenda Radio, I'm Glen Ford. On the web, go to www.BlackAgendaReport.com
BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com .
It is imperative for independent journalism to serve as the media arm of a movement that opposes the privatization of information and works toward the development of a public media apparatus.
British colonial officials turned their guns on women in two Nigerian towns in the 1920s, to put down protests against “head” taxes and levies on market stalls, killing scores.
Ethiopians struggle to forge a national consciousness that supersedes ethnic tribalism, while international human rights NGOs discuss their "responsibility to protect" them, writes Ann Garriso
“Ain’t no power like the power of the people— ‘cause the power of the people don’t stop!” bouncing off summer skyscrapers; ricocheting off resistance
Why is more effort is put into trying to discredit CCOP, while the ruling class is pulling all stops to hoodwink the public with actual reformism, like the George Floyd Act.
