Exclusively in the new print issue of CounterPunch

HOW MITT ROMNEY DODGED THE DRAFT — H. Bruce Franklin remembers Romney from his Stanford days and lays out exactly how he and his father ensured he would evade service in the war which, at Stanford, he was demonstrating for. Andrew Cockburn gives CounterPunchers a compelling investigation of the rise of automated warfare and of the Drones, their vast costs and constant failures. Wei Zhang assesses the social and health costs of China’s incredible GDP growth.

September 01, 2011

The March of the Technofascists

Robots of the World Unite!

by THOMAS H. NAYLOR

A specter is haunting America – the specter of technofascism. We are enmeshed in a global system of conquest and destruction, dominance and deceit in which Wall Street, Corporate America, the Pentagon, the U.S. Government, and the Israeli lobby manipulate and control our lives through money, political power, markets, media, and technology resulting in the loss of political will, civil liberties, collective memory, and traditional culture.

Robots of the world unite against affluenza, technomania, cybermania, megalomania, robotism, globalization, and imperialism:

Affluenza: Overconsumption of more and more stuff

Technomania: God-like worship of technology which we equate with progress

Cybermania: Obsession with some of the most anti-intellectual, anti-educational, anti-creativity, and anti-social devices ever conceived which have the potential to destroy community, undermine democracy, dehumanize society, and induce emotional instability.

Megalomania: Mental condition characterized by delusions of great personal power, influence, grandeur, and wealth and the obsessive-compulsive worship of anything that is big.

Robotism: Condition of those who behave as if they were perfectly cloned, mindless automatons, who think the same, vote the same, watch the same TV programs, visit the same Web sites, and buy the same consumer goods.

Globalization: International system of mass production, mass marketing, mass distribution, mass consumption, mega financial institutions, and global telecommunications, which works best if we are all the same.

Imperialism: Foreign policy based on the concepts of full spectrum dominance and imperial overstretch.

Thomas H. Naylor is Founder of the Second Vermont Republic and Professor Emeritus of Economics at Duke University; co-author of Affluenza, Downsizing the U.S.A., and The Search for Meaning.