Dr. Franklin was a vocal critic of the Vietnam War, and his radical politics led to his firing by Stanford in 1971, a move that was seen as a blow to academic freedom on US college campuses. He has published writing on topics as diverse as the Vietnam War, prison literature, environmentalism, and science fiction. He is currently a professor emeritus at Rutgers University, where he retired from in 2016 at the age of 82, after teaching there since 1975. Eddie Conway spoke with him again leading up to the 2020 election for TRNN’s Rattling the Bars, and he reflected back on his speech in 1980, and also discussed the current political situation.

“Racism is the foundation of capitalism, racism is the foundation of imperialism.”

DR. H. BRUCE FRANKLIN

In 1980, when Franklin spoke at Maryland Penitentiary, it was just prior to the ‘Reagan Revolution,’ and he warned of the rise of fascism in American politics. He related this rise back to the works of Malcolm X and George Jackson, both writers who spoke about fascism from the perspective of Black prisoners in the United States. He drew on the works of those writers to give the prescient warning that “Fascism in its most terroristic phase may not look like fascism to those who benefit from it.”

Speaking to TRNN now, Franklin  reflected on how the fascism that he spoke about in 1980 has expanded and been normalized throughout American society:“Now, when you look in the 40 years since we talked, a lot of the hallmarks of fascism have become true in the United States. The surveillance, the unleashing of the police, mass incarceration, and so forth,” he said.

Franklin’s speech to the Maryland prisoners also highlighted Malcolm X’s view that for Black people, America has always been a prison. He spoke about how racism was the foundation for capitalism and imperialism, and how capitalism and imperialism are the starting point for fascism. He believes that the point is even more salient today where voter suppression and disenfranchisement of Black people, the mass incarceration of Black people, and the ties between the Republican Party and right-wing militias have all  taken hold. 

Fascism is being pushed along by the growing inequities in our society between the rich and the poor, Franklin explained. 

“The fact is fascism is a system that is imposed when capitalism is in real serious trouble. And it is, capitalism is in trouble. We saw that in 2008, and we haven’t escaped from that. [It isn’t about just] ownership and production, [capitalism] is making the existence of our species on the planet questionable,” he said. “We’ve only been around a short time, and we have already … created two threats to the existence of our own species. Nuclear weapons … and now climate change.”

However, Franklin is hopeful that young people in America are prepared to fight back: “I’m 86 years old. I’ve been [doing activism] for over six decades, but I’ve never seen a movement as wide and deep as the present movement. This is hopeful. It’s very exciting to see all the young people out there,” he said. 

Similar to the views he expressed in 1980, Franklin sees hope in solidarity and internationalism by young people as a way to dismantle fascism and, ultimately, capitalism. 

“Many, many young people in this country and other places around the world realize that what we’re facing is a collapsing system. The cold capitalist system is collapsing, and it’s taking down the planet and us with it,” Franklin said. “So people are recognizing that we need to have an alternative to that. We need to think of a future where the great productive capacities that we have, that capitalism has built, are used for the betterment of people.”

Read more:

https://therealnews.com/when-we-do-it-to-people-of-color-we-dont-call-it-fascism-bruce-franklins-predictions-ring-true-40-years-later

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Racism, climate denial, and coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) are major crises standing in the way of a prosperous future for the United States, and resolution of all three could be enabled by science that is persistently ignored. In Ernest Hemingway's novel The Sun Also Rises, a character named Mike is asked how he went bankrupt. “Two ways,” he answers. “Gradually, then suddenly.” The resistance of U.S. policy to science has followed a similar path: It gradually built up over 40 years, beginning with the election of Ronald Reagan, but suddenly reached a tipping point in the chaos of 2020. Will the path to resolution also be gradual and then sudden, and if so, at what cost?

A saying incorrectly attributed to Winston Churchill holds that Americans always do the right thing but only after all other possibilities have been exhausted. Whatever the source, the idea lives on because it resonates and is no more apparent than in the failure of the United States to aggressively deal with 400 years of racial injustice. Slavery ended, but only after a civil war and decades of delay. The civil rights movement created important positive change, but only after civil rights leaders Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and John Lewis boxed in President Lyndon Johnson so that he had little choice but to champion legislation or be associated by history with staunch segregationist George Wallace. Will people of color in the United States have to endure yet more violence from white supremacists before the next inflection toward racial justice?

As for confronting climate change, the prospects seem distant. Support for climate science has been steadily undermined by politicians catering to businesses dependent on fossil fuels and by religious conservatives suspicious of science because it argues for evolution. When California's Secretary for Natural Resources Wade Crowfoot challenged President Donald Trump on climate change, the president laughed and said, “I don't think science knows, actually.” Perhaps Trump knew he was saying something untrue but that many Americans agree with. Will wholesale environmental destruction have to occur before the United States does something about climate change?

When it comes to COVID-19, White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows admitted, “We're not going to control the pandemic,” making clear that Trump's only strategy is to wait for therapeutics and vaccines to soften the blow. Although prospects for both look promising, we are months, if not a year, away from reasonable supplies of either. In the same interview, Meadows said that we would defeat the virus “because we're Americans.” Such nationalistic exceptionalism is embarrassing. The virus doesn't “know” who is an American. Must hundreds of thousands more people die before the United States recognizes that humility in the face of challenge is the way to save lives?

Now that so many possibilities have been tried and exhausted, can science help push the country toward resolving these issues? Science must deal with the systemic racism that persists in our enterprise. There are scientifically sound measures that could promote greater racial justice in America, but the scientific community is in no position to advocate for racial justice if its own house is not in order, and that requires difficult soul-searching about the underrepresentation of racial and ethnic groups as well as norms and practices of science that are not inclusive. Scientists must continue to speak out. Skepticism of the peril of COVID-19 has brought forth the response of science in ways never before seen. Scientists must hold on to that voice once the world gets past the pandemic. The old ideal of keeping politics out of science has not served the United States well. And scientists must continue to do the best science. Eventually, society will ask for help. Let's make sure science has the goods when they do.

Read more:

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/370/6517/639

Gusnote  (GUS VIEWS): Politics and economics AREN'T SCIENCES, though mathematics can be used to make some economic calculations. Politics and economics are ART FORMS (often devious and manipulative) in which the parameters are chosen rather than OBSERVED.

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You’d think that if you woke up after an election to find one candidate leading by two million votes, with the millions of votes yet to be counted almost certainly going heavily in his favor, that would be it: “Well, the result seems clear: you had a race and the voters chose one guy over another. That’s democracy in action!” But we are dealing with the United States and its Electoral College: the 18th-century contraption of slave-owning elites who had already restricted the right to a vote to limited categories of white men. Yet even with this truncated electorate, they were frantically worried that challenges to the domination of the rich elite (the only people worthy and wise enough to rule!) might arise, and so they rigged up the Electoral College to ensure that the popular vote of the filthy rabble would never be the sole determining factor in obtaining the presidency. Now here we are. Once again, the will of the people has been expressed, narrowly but decisively, at the ballot box; and once again, this means nothing. All that matters is how well one side or another has gamed the slave-owners’ democracy-suppressing system.

Yes, it should never have been this close, with an incumbency that has literally destroyed the economy and wilfully condemned tens of thousands of Americans to needless death. And yes, the Democrats ran a candidate who was as close to an empty suit of clothes hanging on a rack as he could possibly be, inspiring no one, offering nothing but vague bromides (“Nothing will change,” he told our present-day wealthy elites) while adamantly rejecting policies and programs that addressed the urgent needs of ordinary Americans. Yes, he was the worst possible opposition candidate at the worst possible time. But even with his manifold shortcomings, the American people have once again rejected Trump at the ballot box. And once again, the slave-owning oligarchs of yore have stretched out their dead hands and are threatening to strangle the will of the people. 

Read more:

http://www.chris-floyd.com/mobile/articles/brief-note-on-a-bleary-post-election-morning-04112020.html

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