Of r £A4"1rnu Datil Seventy-Seven Years of Editorial Freedom EDITED AND MANAGED BY STUDENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN UNDER AUTHORITY OF BOARD IN CONTROL OF STUDENT PUBLICATIONS New Fascism American Style? L :__ t.: Where Opinions Are Free, 420 MAYNARD ST., ANN ARBOR, MICH. Truth Will Prevail NEWS PHONE: 764-0552 Editorials printed in The Michigan Daily express the individual opinions of staff writers or the editors. This must be noted in all reprints. SATURDAY, MARCH 9, 1968 NIGHT EDITOR: DAVID KNOKEI I After the Referenda: A Time for Student Action STUDENTS HAVE always been an in- tegral part of the University, but have very rarely been granted a voice in form- ing its policies. The issue of whether University researchers should be allowed to do classified work is a case in point. Ailthough student leaders were con- sulted before the Faculty Assembly Committee on Research Policies wrote its controversial Elderfield Report ap- proving most classified research, stu- dents were not allowed to participate in the drafting of the report. This coming Tuesday and Wednesday, students will have a chance to take a stand on the classified research issue and on the question of the University's par- ticipation in the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA) by voting on two ref- erenda questions on the Student Gov- ernment Council election ballot. UNFORTUNATELY, the referenda do not constitute student participation in the decision-making process because they promise to be virtually ignored by the faculty and administration. A typical reaction comes from Vice President for Research A. Geoffrey Nor- man who says he would "probably be a little troubled" if students voted over- whelmingly for the elimination of classi- fled research. "This is a very complex issue," Norman adds. "A quickie vote by a student group adds nothing and may only serve to con- fuse the issue." Norman feels classified research "is particularly a faculty issue" and is happy to see it was "handled in a re- sponsible way" by the Faculty Assembly committee. Granted, faculty members have a sub- stantial stake in the issues and should not lose their voice in the final decision. Credibility Gap FORMULA RHETORIC Department. January 15: Even if it means scrimp- Ing on other things, we will hold the line against a tuition increase for this coming fall semester. January 15: Under no circumstances can I conceive of there being a dormi- tory fee increase next fall. January 15: Frankly, I feel no urge to become a candidate. If nominated I will not run, if elected I will not serve. March 15: UnlessF the legislature re- stores the cuts in our appropriations, there may be no alternative to raising tuition for next fall. March 15: If the unions get collective bargaining privileges, we may have to eat those words about there being no dormitory fee increase. March 15: I repeat, I am not a can- didate. I will only accept an honest draft. June 15: The shortsighted legislature is dangerously near forcing a tuition hike on this University. June 15: Irresponsible unions are on the verge of forcing our office in to levy- ing a dormitory fee increase nobody wants to see. June 15: I think I hear my country calling. AUGUST 15: We know that this 25 per cent tuition increase may force some students to tighten their belts a little... August 15: Our projections indicate ,that after this last $100, students will not have to tolerate another dormitory fee increase in the future. August 15: Without the responsible leadership my candidacy offers the coun- try, the United States will lapse into an- other four years of bankruptcy, ineffec- tual leadership, and impending Com- munism. Only in ... -URBAN LEHNER Second class postage paid at Ann Arbor, Michigan, .120 Maynard St.. Ann Arbor, Michigan, 48104. The Daily is a member of the Associated Press, Collegiate Press Service and Liberation News Service. Daily except Monday during regular academic school year. Daily except Sunday and Monday during regular summer session. Fall and winter subscription rate: $4.50 per term by carrie ($5 by mail); $8.00 for regular academic school year ($9 by mail). Editorial Staff However, Norman misses the point en- tirely when he assumes this or any issue at the University is of little concern to students. The University should exist primarly to educate students. Everything at the Uni- versity has a direct relationship to this process. Because students are to a large extent the best judges of their educa- tional needs, they should have a signi- ficant say in all University policy-mak- ing decisions. SINCE IDEALLY the primary reason faculty members undertake research is to become better instructors, students have a strong interest in the kind of re- search being done. Furthermore, student interest in fac- ulty research is spurred by the fear that such research will be done at the ex- pense of instruction time. Because of their interest in research, students should be provided with a me- chanism to participate in the University's research policy-making. Students are expected to show strong support for the cessation of classified research and the withdrawal of the Uni- versity from IDA in Tuesday and Wednes- day's elections. If University officials ignoe the ref- erenda, already tenuous student-admin- istration relations w i 11 be severely strained. SOME STUDENT leaders are already thinking in terms of very militant action if the voice of the students is totally ignored. They suggest sitting-in at the University's Willow Run Laboratories in Ypsilanti where about $9 million of classified research projects are currently being performed. Though such an action would unfairly ignore faculty opinion, it would be un- derstandable in light of administration and faculty refusal to recognize the in- terest of students in the matter. Unlike the student power movement of November 1966, the activists will not tol- erate the formation of new tri-partite commissions to study the problem. This time they will demand immediate action. Very likely President Fleming has been waiting until after the referenda to pull out of IDA so he can use it as a com- promise proposal. Students realize this and will not be fooled. Students have much too little control over a university which was established for their benefit. If this campus blows up over the issue of classified research, it will be only because the faculty and administration has continually refused to grant students the power they need to help improve their own education. -MARTIN HIRSCHMAN J'Accuse WHILE ONE OF the first casualties of any war is the democratic tradition of moderate and responsible debate, this does not excuse the intemperate and ill- considered outburst of Senator Robert F. Kennedy (D-NY) Thursday on the Senate floor. Kennedy in a fit of vitupertive excess asked, "Are we like the God of the Old Testament that we can decide .. . what hamlets in Vietnam are going to be destroyed?" At best the outburst reflects the bias inherent in Gentile World History. And a dispassionate examination of the historical record-preferably based on the works of one of 14 leading Jewish his- torians-will reveal a consensus that if the God of the Old Testament was not a great God, he certainly fell into the category of good deities. Without the support of a solid base of tradition, the God of the Old Testament acted swiftly to meet such unforeseen challenges as Adam and Eve's shift to- ward aggressive, expansionist apple- munching. WITHOUT THE aid of sophisticated technology, the God of Wrath re- sponded to the threats of an era far more fraught with danger than the per- iod of the New Testament. And the qual- By HARVEY WASSERMAN Editorial Director, '66-'67 A fascist government is a one- party system, highly centralized and authoritarian, with rigid con- trol over every phase of a na- tion's life . . . This government is militaristic, nationalistic and im- perialistic and it claims dogmatic political faith. --Herbert Matthews of the New York Times on Nazi Germany IT CAN NO longer be accepted that the troubles of our govern- ment and our society stem from men who are well-meaning but misguided, that if the conserva- tive Lyndon Johnson were re- placed by a liberal Kennedy things would be substantially dif- ferent, that the Vietnam war is in any manner of speaking a mistake. Nor can it be accepted that the approaches practiced by the Johnson administration in Viet- nam, in urban Americaror in re- gard to civil liberties are in any way alien to the ideology of American liberalism. On the con- trary, the excesses of the Johnson administration are the ultimate expression of Americanliberalism, Liberalism as it is practiced in America is a profoundly conser- vative . doctrine. The two-party system here is based on Lockean consensus-property rights, repre- sentative democracy and corpo- rate privilege are the assump- tions; the parties differ basically on how best to maintain the sta- tus quo. The liberal-reformist ap- proach has dominated since 1932. Liberalism combines a smatter- ing of humanitarianism with the often correct observation that the best way to preserve the status quo is to get at the causes of un- rest, poverty, people turning to communism, etc. In this way the Marshall Plan was sold and this too was the rhetoric of much of the Kennedy reform of the early sixties. BUT WHEN liberal reform fails to cope with the needs of the peo- ple on the bottom we find that the essence of liberalism is not humanitarianism but rather so- cial control. The Rostow ap- proach to "underdevelopment" is the classic case. The American approach to the Third World is couched in the rhetoric that fast industrialization along the lines of parliamentary capitalist de- mocracy is the best way to serve the needs of a starving people. (That such development serves the needs of American corporate capital is also evident). All American aid moves from this basic assumption of develop- ment-the rest is detail. When deviations alien to that system of development-such as revolu- tion in Cuba or Vietnam or radi- cal reform in the Dominican Re- public occur - the international guard is called out. It would be nice to be able to deal with this in terms of strict economic exploitation and im- perialism, but that explanation, while important, is not entirely adequate. There is simply too much more involved. THE ROSTOW approach to in- ternational development is mir- rored in the Kerr approach to education, the Daley approach to domestic reform, the Humphrey ex-ADA approach to civil liber- ties. The key words are elitism and order; there is no strict phi- losophy to their actions, each ap- proach their domain with a gen- eral view whose rhetoric is based on the needs of the general wel- fare. Each will listen to those who are being administrated but only with the clear understanding that ultimate power resides at the top. To ignore the administrative de- cision is to break the law and create disorder-in no cases will this be tolerated. Indeed, this is the one thing that cannot be tolerated, for per- sonal self-determination on the bottom is a threat to the entire carefully ordered structure. The elite of the party machines, the labor and management corpora- tions and the other spinoff cor- porations (such as education and welfare) maintain a semblance of democracy while basing their existence on a totalitarian sta- bility of the law and order de- signed by the legislatures they in fact control. A serious challenge to that or- der, however grounded in moral right, will always evoke a hard- line response in the name of law and against "anarchy." Thus insurrection in the 'ghet- tos, which could ultimately have been avoided by allowing them to become self-contained financial, and political communities, is less a price for a mayor to pay than allowing poverty funds to be handled on a local level. Thus the liberal mayor of New York prefers to spend $500,000 a day on the National Guard rather than allow garbagemen $130 a week in an "illegal" strike. Thus university administrators will pay a sit-in' to preserve their own autocratic rule. WHY? IN ONE sense it seems we are confronted with a bunch of sacred, insecure men deathly afraid of "alien ideologies." The system of bureaucracy and; con- sensus is so ingrained in our cul- ture that men in power have lost their psychological tolerance for any conflict whatever. As historian Norman Pollack has said: "(We face) the desire to eliminate uncertainty from one's existence. Rigid ego-defens- es are erected against against see- ing what one does not want to see. Conflict cannot be tolerated. Contrary ideas cannot be admit- ted, for fear they will threaten one's very identity." But ultimately we must recog- nize that the threat to these bu- reaucrats is real. American society is now being strained as it never was before. The liberal reform of modern social science has proved inadequate and can never cope with the real physical and psy- chological shortcomings of life on the bottom or even in the middle of the heap. The choice is be- tween a radical relocation of the loci of social power. and the po- lice. The liberals, when pushed, rapidly and unabashedly join the conservatives in 'opting for the police. THIS IS not without precedent. If the socio-political approach of society's leadership is based on the totalitarian assumption that a government can and must de- fine order and the good life for all who live under it, then when that order is threatened it is only logical to expect similar totalitar- ian response. Totalitarian liberal- ism, however humanitarian, helps lay the base for totalitarian reac- tion as well. After World War I Italy and Germany found themselves caught between extreme dissatisfaction on the bottom and the remnants of corporate elitist control on the top. When challenged by a weak- er revolutionary left the corpo- rate (and formerly reformist) right played on the frustrations of the bourgeoisie to preserve a so- cial structure in which they dom- inated. The rallying call was that of an authoritarian restoration of law and order: the call was maintained with a war economy and a liberal dose of racism. All the same elements are pres- ent in the United States today. One does not use the term "fascist" lightly. To evoke the spectre of men who deliberately exterminated six million civilians, who built a society on racism and exploitation and whose scien- tists treated human beings as if they were mere objects to be ex- perimented on is to evoke the worst human aberration the modern world has seen, BUT IT IS time to realize that the United States is repeating all that Nazi Germany did. It is fighting its third war in less than thirty years against the yellow race; its politicians are playing on the racism of the middle and lower classes at home; its foreign and domestic "welfare'' and "ed- ucation" programs are based on the treatment of human beings as if they and their societies were objects to be administered into a preconceived mold of none of their own doing. The economy of the country is increasingly based on war, the rhetoric of its welfare is con- tinually ;based on military termi- nology, the country is purposely kept in a permanent state of na- tional crisis and semi-panic, and everywhere the police are given freer reign and taken further away from public control. If there are differences between the German Nazi party and the American liberal-conservative elite they are defineable in differences of the objective conditions of the two countries at the two times, not in terms of the relative worth and needs of the reactionary elite. In Germany the intellectual elite either fled or sold , out; in 'America the intellectual elite has designed the plans for consolida- tion of control. It is time to stop playing with words-these men are the fascists of a mass technocracy and must be recognized as such. If they can be stopped at all it is only a dis- affected, well-informed mass with a plan and a will for self-deter- mination that can do it. t Park THE MAJOR problem qualified blacks have in getting into busi- ness is not non-black competition per se, but lack of funds, inability to obtain bank loans, and exhorbi- tant insurance rates. Banks, for whatever reasons, generally don't lend money to Ne- groes to start businesses. Insurance rates in Negro areas, *, especially riot areas are so high that it exceeds my verbal ability to express it. Try to imagine the face of an insurance salesman when you present a black face, with what little money you and your friends could scrape together, asking for insurance on that "nice litle burned out place on 12th St., Detroit" that you plan to rebuild. The Lehner-Shapiro plan would virtually kill all commerce in the riot area (those who riot rarely stop to think about such things, only the 95% who don't riot.) What will this do to "ghetto residents unable to transport themselves to the low price subur- ban shopping plazas," mentioned in the article? I THINK the Kerner Commis- sion report is in the right ball- park playing the right games. It deserves more attention and credit than you gave it, and I am firm- ly convinced that a program along the lines indicated by the report will be the only successful pro- gram and should be started im- mediately. -Carl Robinson, '68 Letters: Right Game, Right Bal To the Editor: THE EDITORIAL on the Kerner Commission Report by Ur- ban Lehner and Walter Shapiro ("Who's Afraid of White Ra- cism?" Daily, March 5) had a couple of good points but the sug- gestion on riot control was ill- conceived. It is true that black people want control over the political institutions that govern them (like all other people), and it is true that the unrealistic and pet- ty laws that govern much of the welfare program cause unnec- cesary hardship and resentment in persons receiving aids. But the chance that the last part of the editorial, on riot control, was not written in jestrcaused me to sub- mit this letter. The authors suggested that: When riots occur, all symbols of white authority-including the police-should be removed' from the ghetto. The army- not the national guard of po- lice-should take up positions on the perimeter of the ghetto and merely prevent it from spreading. Where would you establish this perimeter? Around the block where the first brick was thrown? the area where you anticipate In the Defense of Biafra To the Editor:, DESPITE HIS wrongheadedness and moral obtuseness, Mr. Saks (Daily, Feb. 20) deserves an answer, for his letter typifies so much of the attitude towards the fate of Biafra which my article sought to combat. I had pointed out the disquieting equanimity with which C. L. Sulzberger accepted the necessity of uniting Nigeria "no matter how gory the Ibo experience." This "gory Ibo experience" "doesn't even trouble Mr. Saks. Having safely ignored the issue, he blamed the Ibos who, he says, "promptly took up their marbles and ran home." What, one wonders, should they have done in the face of the genocide. Surely Saks must know that communal suicide is not an alternative that any people will consciously contemplate embracing-be they Jews or Ibos. Dr. George Steiner recently drew our attention to the grim real- ity in which a man can read Goethe or Rilke, play Bach and Shubert and still go to his daily work at Auschwitz. Our critics Sulzberger and Saks remind us of no less harrowing grimness: that it is possible to suffer the experience of Auschwitz and not be touched by a pang of conscience when others are subjected to the same fate. I DON'T KNOW which is more deplorable in Mr. Saks-his sheer ignorance or his intellectual dishonesty. He quoted Time (Feb. 9) as his authority for his assertion that "colonialist Portugal" aids Biafra whereas Nigeria is the "corner-stone" of "progressive" Africa. One who turns to the article in Time will in fact discover that Nigerian "MIG fighters were flown mostly by Egyptian and other (South African) mercenary pilots." Yes, white South Africans-those stalwart defenders of black African humanity! What the curious will also discover is that the Time article was devoted almost exclusively to reporting the heroic struggles being waged by the Biafrans in their determination to survive the Nigerian policy of extermination. The only mention of the role of Portugal in this issue was to the effect that private planes "fly badly needed medicines, along with arms and ammunition, from Lisbon to Port Harcourt, Biafra." This was Mr. Saks' sole evidence for Por- tugal's aid to Biafra. INDEED, in the same week Newsweek (Feb. 12) reported substan- tially the same news under the heading "Biafra's burning spirit of resistance," but with the additional information-which Time omitted- that Nigerian planes were used to bomb "schools, markets and hospitals" in Biafran villages and cities. Mr. Saks-who must be very knowledge- able about Africa-assures us that the regime which came to power in January, 1966, ruled with clenched iron fist" (never mind his hope- lessly mixed metaphors). We are never told how this tyranny manifested - 11 ___ii_ «t r+, v. A- - + - :-o -rm 9 7n h nnl e R it trouble? the whole black com- munity; for instance, all of Har- lem, or Watts, or maybe even the entire city of Washington, D.C. (67% Negro)? Then what about the overwhelming majority of blacks and non-blacks who do not participate in the riots and who are now inside your surrounded area, without police protection, or food (stores ususally closed), or a route out of the area (the troops, remember)? Does this plan in- clude taking this lack of police protection and lick of other pub-. lic services (garbage collection, for example) into account at tax time? This is racism in one of it's most blatant forms, not even a slight revision of the ancient mot-- to "they're all black, so let them all suffer." BESIDES, when does an inci- dent become a riot? When a group of people become unruly, say five people, ten, fifteen? May- be it should be 25 black people or 50 non-blacks, since black peo- ple are twice as potent. With proper police handling, many riots can be prevented anyway. What incentive does a policeman have for meeting situations fairly and squarely, if he knows that if he botches it, and it gets out of hand, that he gets a three day vacation (instead of the many sleepless nights that he can now look for- ward to) ? If this society is to survive, the establishment, including the po- lice, must give all citizens, black and non-black alike, equalsprotec- tion like being on duty in every area when disturbances of any kind occur. Suppose you did bring in the army anyway, and surrounded what you finally decided was the desired area, end somehow dis- posed of your conscience. You would most probably be mistaken if you thought that the army would repeat it's previous suc- cesses. Among the reasons that the army has enjoyed success in riot control are these: The army is not the normal symbol of the establishment (ex- cept to those classified 1-A), the police are-A situation that would be quickly remedied if the troops automatically (Federal laws aside) responded to major disturbances. The establishment, according to the man throwing the brick or over the police, the firemen, and the national guard by the time the federals get there, so they are willing to call it quits. But if the army got there first, a perimeter couldn't be established far enough away (and still be meaningful) to avoid continued and sustained tests of their mettle and com- petence. Even the best units are com- posed of men with guns; men are fragile beings. Don't underesti- mate the skill, resourcefulness, or daring of the rioters who have nothing, and therefore nothing to lose. Confronting them with a heavily armed force could lead to low cycler guerrilla warfare or worse. The authors continue their art- icle by saying: By allowing looters to strip store in the ghetto of every piece of merchandise, the gov- ernment would be discouraging white merchants from returning to the ghetto after the riots. When this happens, blacks can take a major and significant step toward self determination by running their own shops as cooperatives. Along with implying that Ne- groes could run their own neigh- borhoods unhindered if they ruined the place so badly that no one else would want it, the au- thors showed a lack of under- standing of the reasons a Negro has trouble going into business for himself. "Don't Be A Coward - Try It Again" \,, 196 196 A . A