The usual suspects – Harry Belafonte, Danny Glover, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Rigoberta Menchu, and Aldolfo Perez Esquivel – back Castro’s totalitarian state, a state where these artists and writers wouldn’t be able to practice their craft freely. Very distressing to see Nadine Gordimer sign on to such moral blindness.
BEGALA AWARD NOMINEE: “Under Nazi rule there was never any doubt about “big business” being subordinated to the political regime. In the United States, however, it has been apparent for decades that corporate power has become so predominant in the political establishment, particularly in the Republican Party, and so dominant in its influence over policy, as to suggest a role inversion the exact opposite of the Nazis’. At the same time, it is corporate power, as the representative of the dynamic of capitalism and of the ever-expanding power made available by the integration of science and technology with the structure of capitalism, that produces the totalizing drive that, under the Nazis, was supplied by ideological notions such as Lebensraum. In rebuttal it will be said that there is no domestic equivalent to the Nazi regime of torture, concentration camps or other instruments of terror. But we should remember that for the most part, Nazi terror was not applied to the population generally; rather, the aim was to promote a certain type of shadowy fear – rumors of torture – that would aid in managing and manipulating the populace. Stated positively, the Nazis wanted a mobilized society eager to support endless warfare, expansion and sacrifice for the nation.” – Sheldon Wolin, arguing that today’s America represents “inverted totalitarianism,” in the Nation.
The Dish 