by Peter Crabb    
 21 March 2010

"If every age has its own characteristic doctrine, there are a thousand signs which point to Fascism as the characteristic doctrine of our time.” Benito Mussolini, Italian Encyclopedia (1932)

 I sat down at my kitchen table a few days ago to pay my monthly bills. It was that time of year when several insurance bills were due. While writing the checks I fumed about the large proportion of my income that is sucked up by the insurance industry and the other corporate puppet masters. How do they do it? They do it by the decidedly undemocratic practice of writing laws that government passes and enforces and that benefit them and them alone. For instance, everyone wants to drive a car, right? To drive that car of your corporate-cultivated dreams, you must first pay the insurance industry, or you could end up in jail. Everyone wants to own their own home, right? That’s the American dream. Here too, you must first pay the insurance industry--private mortgage insurance and homeowner’s insurance. It’s right there in the fine print of your mortgage. Insurance companies, banks, and government--helping each other out to screw you over.

 There are so many aspects of our everyday lives that are coercive collaborations between business and government. After you buy that car that you absolutely must have because the construction industry has built roads and stores and schools and businesses in such far-flung, decentralized patterns that you couldn’t possibly walk anywhere, plus all of that insurance, the law in most states requires an annual safety inspection at the service center. You must pay the automotive repair industry and the state to pass Go. Want to shrink your footprint on the land and live in a yurt? Sorry, no can do. The construction industry wrote the zoning laws that prohibit any housing that isn’t built by the construction industry. You pay taxes to your municipal government so that they can enforce those laws. Want to live like a real ecofreak without any electricity? I sure do. But, nope. The electric utility companies wrote the zoning laws that force you to be on their landscape-destroying, bird-killing, EMF-emitting grid and to pay their ever-skyrocketing rates. Like it or not, you are paying for that upwind nuke plant or coal plant, along with the mining and air pollution and irradiation that go along with those saurian centralized technologies. By law, you don’t have a choice.

 The business community would call this merger of the interests of industry and government just darn smart business. Here on Main Street, we prefer to call it corporatism or fascism. As Mussolini envisioned it, fascism eliminates the importance of individual freedom and choice in favor of a totalitarian (he coined that term, too!) corporatist industrial state. In a fascist state, you and I are nothings that merely support the larger entity. Only the corporatist state can achieve the great, glorious technical accomplishments that are mythologized as our heroic collective destiny (recall the industry pimp Ronald Reagan’s “Shining City upon a Hill”).

 Being coerced by law to tie into the electric grid--and the many other stick-ups--might more properly be called “technofascism” because it is the subjugation of the individual and the empowerment of the corporatist state using technologies as both vehicle for profit-making and tool for controlling the masses. Mobile cell phones and service, for example, are enormously profitable for the telecommunications industry. My students tell me their average phone bill is about $80 per month. By comparison, when I was in college, my phone bill was virtually $0 per month--I very rarely used the pay phone at the end of the hall in my dormitory. Cell phones are also an ingenious device for social control. What is your typical person in the industrialized world paying attention to at this very moment? His or her cell phone, that’s what. That’s mighty impressive social control, thanks to Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, and the rest, all of whom legislated their way into our lives and landscapes with their industry-authored 1996 Telecommunications Act, signed into law by the industry pimp Bill Clinton.

 Technofascism isn’t new. The Romans practiced it when they enslaved people to build their roads and aqueducts. More recently, electrification projects, such as the Tennessee Valley Authority during the Depression of the 1930s, were built on the backs of taxpayers who were forced to pay for the dams and powers lines that wrecked the Appalachian landscape and then were thrust without any choice into the sparkling new world of toasters, washing machines, vacuum cleaners, and monthly electric bills.

 In the 1940s and 50s, General Motors CEO Alfred P. Sloan conspired to purchase and dismantle the public transit systems in major U.S. cities and replace the relatively less noxious electric rail streetcars with diesel-burning buses--built by GM. Together with Standard Oil and tire and construction companies, Sloan succeeded in filling city streets with buses and private cars and vastly expanded the paving-over of the countryside. The demonic height of the mid-century car frenzy was the construction of the interstate highway system (a.k.a. the Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways (emphasis added)). Ruinous dependence on the automobile was brought to us care of the corporate masters and their government flunkies.

 The telecommunications industry today is also a pernicious technofascist enterprise. Back in the 1990s, I crusaded against the deployment of Caller ID in my state, on the grounds that it radically changed the conditions of individual privacy. The telecom industry lost the first round of their attempt to get the state legislature to mandate Caller ID, but a year later, no doubt after many campaign contributions and free golf trips to St. Andrews, the state legislature changed its mind and a new era was born.

 In retrospect, my concerns about Caller ID seem quaint. Today, people voluntarily carry around iPhones with GPS systems that enable some technocrat somewhere to track their every move through space and time. We’ve come a long way, baby.

 Recently I spoke with a former student about the increase in surveillance everywhere. A bright 25 year old who just completed a master’s degree in philosophy, he replied that he was not concerned about surveillance because he has nothing to hide. Just what they want everyone to think!

 Indoctrination into accepting the technofascist reality begins shortly after birth, when parents substitute screens for human company for their infants. The objective is to cultivate dependence on and unquestioning loyalty to the technological system--a key doctrine in classical fascism. Today, most people in the U.S. voluntarily spend about 4 hours per day immersed in propaganda displayed on their tv screens. Children now spend about 8 hours per day using various electronic technotoys, including tv, videogames, computers, and cell phones. These devices are like cherished friends to them.

 At a recent faculty meeting on the university campus where I teach, I proposed a policy to ban cell phone use in classrooms. Many students are addicted to texting and checking their phones to the point that it impairs their ability to learn and is exasperatingly disruptive. Older faculty members were extremely supportive of the proposal, while younger faculty, with cell phones strapped to their belts like .45s, said they felt a campus-wide ban on cell phones would violate their academic freedom to set their own classroom standards. The technofascists are winning the hearts and minds of all incoming members of society.

 Indoctrination into the distorted technofascist worldview doesn’t just affect young people. Ask any airline passenger as he or she is being “processed” through airport “security” whether all of this seems excessive, and you will probably hear, “Well, it’s better to be safe than sorry.” Just what they want everyone to think! But is all that surveillance and crowd control and profiling and hazardous full-body X-raying really about “being safe”? Or is it the corporatist state at work protecting expensive corporate property (aircraft) from the whims of dangerous individual human beings? We can’t have mere people blowing up valuable machines.

 And, of course, there is the central technofascist theme of perpetual war. The development, purchase, and sales of technologies of war drive the corporate state economy. President Obama (yet another industry pimp) has proposed a record $708 billion defense budget for 2011 to fund what are now his imperialist adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan. (The very framing of an imperialist war budget as a “defense” budget is technofascist Newspeak at its most ingenious.) Seven hundred and eight billion dollars for high-tech murder and destruction and poisoning of the planet. Private armies like Xe Services LLC (formerly Blackwater), who will get a huge cut of that budget, echo the secret police and militias of all the nasty totalitarian regimes of the 20th century. (For excellent dramatizations of the technofascist police state, see Sinclair Lewis’s 1935 novel It Can’t Happen Here and Frank Capra’s 1941 film Meet .)

 The future looks bright for technofascism. According to a preposterous editorial in The New York Times, spreading global cell phone service will save developing countries from poverty--whether they want to be saved or not. Also according to the Times, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission has proposed a 10-year plan to make broadband internet service the nation’s main channel of communication--paid for, of course, by taxpayers, whether they want this or not. This plan reeks of technofascist mythology about the future promise of the shining industrial state at the expense of what the people want or need: “the United States is lagging far behind other countries in broadband adoption and speed. About a third of Americans have no access to high-speed Internet service, cannot afford it or choose not to have it” [emphasis added].

 Promises of a glorious technology-enchanted future, suppression of the individual for the greater good of the corporatist industrial state, mass engineering spectacles, perpetual high-tech war, and rapacious disregard for the Earth’s ecosystems. That’s our culture.

Sources

 “Technology Traps,” by Peter Crabb. Culture Change, Nov. 10, 2008: CultureChange.org

 “Taken for a Ride” – documentary about the corporate dismantling of public transit, reviewed with filmaker interview in the Auto-Free Times (now CultureChange.org)

 “What is Fascism?”  fordham.edu

 “The Revolution Has Gone Mobile” nytimes.com

 “Effort to Widen U.S. Internet Access Sets Up Battle” [the battle is between corporate entities; the people have no say - Culture Change editor] nytimes.com

 Peter Crabb is a social psychologist in rural eastern Pennsylvania. He may be contacted at pbcrabb "at" verizon.net.

http://www.culturechange.org/cms/content/view/616/1/

Doba tehnofašizma

od Petera Crabba

21. ožujka 2010.

„Ako svako doba ima svoju karakterističnu doktrinu, postoji tisuću znakova koji ukazuju na fašizam kao karakterističnu doktrinu našeg vremena.“ Benito Mussolini , Talijanska enciklopedija (1932.) Prije nekoliko dana sjeo sam za kuhinjski stol kako bih platio mjesečne račune. Bilo je to doba godine kada je trebalo platiti nekoliko računa za osiguranje. Dok sam pisao čekove, kiptio sam od bijesa zbog velikog dijela mojih prihoda koji usisavaju osiguravajuća industrija i ostali korporativni lutkari. Kako to rade? To rade izrazito nedemokratskom praksom pisanja zakona koje vlada donosi i provodi, a koji koriste njima i samo njima. Na primjer, svi žele voziti auto, zar ne? Da biste vozili taj automobil svojih korporativno uzgojenih snova, prvo morate platiti osiguravajućoj industriji ili biste mogli završiti u zatvoru. Svi žele posjedovati vlastiti dom, zar ne? To je američki san. I ovdje prvo morate platiti osiguravajućoj industriji - privatno hipotekarno osiguranje i osiguranje vlasnika kuće. To je odmah tu, u sitnom tisku vaše hipoteke. Osiguravajuća društva, banke i vlada - pomažu jedni drugima da vas prevare. Postoji toliko mnogo aspekata našeg svakodnevnog života koji su prisilna suradnja između poduzeća i vlade. Nakon što kupite taj automobil koji apsolutno morate imati jer je građevinska industrija izgradila ceste, trgovine, škole i poduzeća u tako raštrkanim, decentraliziranim obrascima da nigdje ne biste mogli pješice , plus svo to osiguranje, zakon u većini država zahtijeva godišnji sigurnosni pregled u servisnom centru. Morate platiti automobilskoj industriji i državi da biste prošli Go. Želite li smanjiti svoj otisak na zemljištu i živjeti u jurti? Žao mi je, ne mogu. Građevinska industrija napisala je zakone o zoniranju koji zabranjuju bilo kakvu izgradnju koju nije izgradila građevinska industrija. Plaćate poreze svojoj općinskoj upravi kako bi mogli provoditi te zakone. Želite li živjeti kao pravi ekofrik bez struje? Naravno da želim. Ali, ne. Elektroprivredna poduzeća napisala su zakone o zoniranju koji vas prisiljavaju da budete na njihovoj mreži koja uništava krajolik, ubija ptice i emitira EMF te da plaćate njihove vrtoglave cijene. Sviđalo se to vama ili ne, plaćate za tu nuklearnu elektranu ili termoelektranu na ugljen uz vjetar, zajedno s rudarstvom, zagađenjem zraka i zračenjem koje ide uz te saurijanske centralizirane tehnologije. Po zakonu, nemate izbora. Poslovna zajednica bi ovo spajanje interesa industrije i vlade nazvala jednostavno prokleto pametnim poslovanjem. Ovdje na Glavnoj ulici, radije to nazivamo korporatizmom ili fašizmom. Kako je Mussolini zamislio, fašizam eliminira važnost individualne slobode i izbora u korist totalitarne (on je skovao i taj termin!) korporativne industrijske države. U fašističkoj državi, ti i ja smo ništarija koja samo podržava veći entitet. Samo korporativna država može postići velika, slavna tehnička dostignuća koja se mitologiziraju kao naša herojska kolektivna sudbina (sjetimo se "Sjajnog grada na brdu" industrijskog svodnika Ronalda Reagana). Prisiljavanje na spajanje na električnu mrežu zakonom - i mnoge druge pljačke - moglo bi se ispravnije nazvati "tehnofašizmom" jer se radi o podjarmljivanju pojedinca i osnaživanju korporatističke države koja koristi tehnologije kao sredstvo za ostvarivanje profita i alat za kontrolu masa. Mobilni telefoni i usluge, na primjer, izuzetno su profitabilni za telekomunikacijsku industriju. Moji studenti mi kažu da im je prosječni telefonski račun oko 80 dolara mjesečno. Za usporedbu, kada sam bio na fakultetu, moj telefonski račun bio je praktički 0 dolara mjesečno - vrlo rijetko sam koristio govornicu na kraju hodnika u svom domu. Mobiteli su također genijalan uređaj za društvenu kontrolu. Na što vaša tipična osoba u industrijaliziranom svijetu obraća pažnju u ovom trenutku? Na svoj mobitel, eto na što. To je iznimno impresivna društvena kontrola, zahvaljujući Verizonu, AT&T-u, T-Mobileu i ostalima, koji su svi svojim Zakonom o telekomunikacijama iz 1996., čiji je autor industrija, a koji je potpisao industrijski svodnik Bill Clinton, prokrijumčario svoje ruke. Tehnofašizam nije nov. Rimljani su ga prakticirali kada su porobljavali ljude kako bi gradili svoje ceste i akvadukte. U novije vrijeme, projekti elektrifikacije, poput Uprave doline Tennessee tijekom Velike depresije 1930-ih, izgrađeni su na leđima poreznih obveznika koji su bili prisiljeni plaćati brane i dalekovode koji su uništili krajolik Apalača, a zatim su bez ikakvog izbora gurnuti u blistavi novi svijet tostera, perilica rublja, usisavača i mjesečnih računa za struju. U 1940-ima i 50-ima, izvršni direktor General Motorsa Alfred P. Sloan kovao je zavjeru za kupnju i demontažu sustava javnog prijevoza u većim američkim gradovima te zamjenu relativno manje štetnih električnih tramvaja autobusima na dizelski pogon - koje je proizvodio GM. Zajedno sa Standard Oilom i tvrtkama za gume i građevinarstvo, Sloan je uspio napuniti gradske ulice autobusima i privatnim automobilima te uvelike proširiti popločavanje seoskih područja. Demonski vrhunac automobilske pomame sredinom stoljeća bila je izgradnja sustava međudržavnih autocesta (poznatog kao Nacionalni sustav međudržavnih i obrambenih autocesta Dwighta D. Eisenhowera (naglasak dodan)). Razorna ovisnost o automobilu donesena nam je brigom korporativnih gospodara i njihovih vladinih poslušnika. Telekomunikacijska industrija danas je također poguban tehnofašistički pothvat. Devedesetih godina prošlog stoljeća borio sam se protiv uvođenja Caller ID-a u svojoj državi, s obrazloženjem da je to radikalno promijenilo uvjete privatnosti pojedinaca. Telekomunikacijska industrija izgubila je prvi krug pokušaja da navede državno zakonodavno tijelo da uvede Caller ID, ali godinu dana kasnije, bez sumnje nakon mnogih doprinosa kampanji i besplatnih putovanja na golf u St. Andrews, državno zakonodavno tijelo promijenilo je mišljenje i rođeno je novo doba. Gledajući unatrag, moje brige oko Caller ID-a čine se neobičnima. Danas ljudi dobrovoljno nose iPhonee s GPS sustavima koji omogućuju nekom tehnokratu negdje da prati svaki njihov pokret kroz prostor i vrijeme. Prešli smo dug put. Nedavno sam razgovarao s bivšim studentom o porastu nadzora posvuda. Bistri 25-godišnjak koji je upravo završio magisterij filozofije odgovorio je da ga nadzor ne brine jer nema što skrivati. Upravo ono što žele da svi misle! Indoktrinacija prihvaćanjem tehnofašističke stvarnosti počinje ubrzo nakon rođenja, kada roditelji zamjenjuju ekrane ljudskim društvom svoje djece. Cilj je njegovati ovisnost i bezuvjetnu odanost tehnološkom sustavu - ključnu doktrinu klasičnog fašizma. Danas većina ljudi u SAD-u dobrovoljno provodi oko 4 sata dnevno uronjena u propagandu prikazanu na svojim televizijskim ekranima. Djeca sada provode oko 8 sati dnevno koristeći razne elektroničke tehnološke igračke, uključujući televizore, videoigre, računala i mobitele. Ti su im uređaji poput dragih prijatelja. Na nedavnom sastanku fakulteta na sveučilišnom kampusu gdje predajem, predložio sam politiku zabrane korištenja mobitela u učionicama. Mnogi studenti su ovisni o slanju poruka i provjeravanju telefona do te mjere da im to narušava sposobnost učenja i izuzetno remeti nastavu. Stariji članovi fakulteta izuzetno su podržali prijedlog, dok su mlađi nastavnici, s mobitelima pričvršćenim za pojas poput pušaka kalibra .45, rekli da smatraju da bi zabrana mobitela na cijelom kampusu prekršila njihovu akademsku slobodu da sami postavljaju standarde u učionici. Tehnofašisti osvajaju srca i umove svih novih članova društva. Indoktrinacija iskrivljenim tehnofašističkim svjetonazorom ne utječe samo na mlade ljude. Pitajte bilo kojeg putnika u zrakoplovu dok prolazi kroz „zaštitnu“ provjeru na aerodromu čini li mu se sve ovo pretjeranim i vjerojatno ćete čuti: „Pa, bolje biti siguran nego liječiti.“ Upravo ono što žele da svi misle! Ali je li sav taj nadzor, kontrola mase, profiliranje i opasno rendgensko snimanje cijelog tijela doista zbog „sigurnosti“? Ili je to korporativna država koja štiti skupu korporativnu imovinu (zrakoplove) od hirova opasnih pojedinačnih ljudskih bića? Ne možemo dopustiti da obični ljudi dižu u zrak vrijedne strojeve. I, naravno, tu je središnja tehnofašistička tema vječnog rata. Razvoj, kupnja i prodaja ratnih tehnologija pokreću korporativno državno gospodarstvo. Predsjednik Obama (još jedan industrijski svodnik) predložio je rekordni obrambeni proračun od 708 milijardi dolara za 2011. za financiranje onoga što su sada njegove imperijalističke avanture u Iraku i Afganistanu. (Samo uokviravanje imperijalističkog ratnog proračuna kao „obrambenog“ proračuna je tehnofašistički novogovor u svom najdomišljatijem obliku.) Sedamsto osam milijardi dolara za visokotehnološka ubojstva, uništenje i trovanje planeta. Privatne vojske poput Xe Services LLC (bivši Blackwater), koje će dobiti ogroman dio tog proračuna, odražavaju tajnu policiju i milicije svih gadnih totalitarnih režima 20. stoljeća. (Za izvrsne dramatizacije tehnofašističke policijske države, pogledajte roman Sinclaira Lewisa iz 1935. " To se ovdje ne može dogoditi" i film Franka Capre iz 1941. "Susret".) Budućnost tehnofašizma izgleda svijetla. Prema apsurdnom uvodniku u The New York Timesu, širenje globalne usluge mobilne telefonije spasit će zemlje u razvoju od siromaštva - žele li se spasiti ili ne. Također, prema Timesu, američka Federalna komisija za komunikacije predložila je 10-godišnji plan kojim bi se širokopojasni internet postao glavni komunikacijski kanal u zemlji - koji bi, naravno, plaćali porezni obveznici, žele li to ili ne. Ovaj plan zaudara na tehnofašističku mitologiju o budućem obećanju blistave industrijske države na štetu onoga što ljudi žele ili trebaju: „Sjedinjene Države znatno zaostaju za drugim zemljama u prihvaćanju i brzini širokopojasnog interneta. Oko trećine Amerikanaca nema pristup brzom internetskom servisu, ne može si ga priuštiti ili ga ne želi imati“ [naglasak dodan]. Obećanja slavne budućnosti očarane tehnologijom, potiskivanje pojedinca za veće dobro korporatističke industrijske države, masovni inženjerski spektakli, vječni visokotehnološki rat i grabežljivo zanemarivanje Zemljinih ekosustava. To je naša kultura. Izvori „Tehnološke zamke“, Peter Crabb. Culture Change, 10. studenog 2008.: CultureChange.org „Vozili su nas“ – dokumentarac o korporativnom demontiranju javnog prijevoza, recenziran s intervjuom s filmašem u Auto-Free Times (sada CultureChange.org) „Što je fašizam?“ fordham.edu „Revolucija je postala mobilna“ nytimes.com „Napori za proširenje pristupa internetu u SAD-u započinju bitku“ [bitka se vodi između korporativnih subjekata; ljudi nemaju pravo glasa - urednik Culture Change] nytimes.com Peter Crabb je socijalni psiholog u ruralnom istočnom dijelu Pennsylvanije. Možete ga kontaktirati na pbcrabb "at" verizon.net.