See also: "Whatever Schiavo 'consented' to, Terri Schiavo did not consent to dying from gender oppression" on the Internet
By a contributor and mim3@mim.org March 29, 2005
About the only time that anyone in Amerika uses the word "Left" correctly in context in Amerika is in reference to fascism-- when everyone who believes in cause and effect and not just religion or mystic powers of leaders like Hitler will unite. We have reached one of those very rare moments in the Terri Schiavo case, because some people who want or wanted to keep Terri Schiavo on life support have carried out a dry run for Franco-style fascism.
The Francoite parallel
Local police in charge of the district Terri Schiavo is in are on the look out for kidnappers.(1) The public is already aware that an unbalanced individual tried to take some guns from a gun shop "to save Terri." It turns out that the Florida state police also initiated action to take Terri Schiavo on the request of Governor Jeb Bush, but local police told them that they cannot have custody of Schiavo.(1) Local police then leaked to the Miami Herald that they prepared themselves to take on the National Guard too. Though the police are right that is funny, it's also how dry runs for coups usually look in history, starting with Hitler's Beer Hall Putsch. It is more a theater aimed at supporters.
It is important to be very clear that the demonstrators calling for George W. Bush to send the National Guard and for Jeb Bush "to do something"--at this late a stage-- are Franco-style fascists. They believe that the courts have no role, despite ruling repeatedly against the Schindlers for example. The Franco-style fascists do not believe in the rights of non-Christian minorities and hence see no need for courts to interfere with ultra-Catholic practices.
Surveys have long shown that a majority of the Amerikan public does not understand the general rhetoric about civil liberties for minorities and the role of the courts to uphold them, no matter what any political parties may say. For most Amerikans, "free speech" and "civil liberties" are buzzwords for white nationalism and pride in Amerika--good justifications to bomb Iraq for example. Historically, these phrases do not mean anything concretely, ever since Reconstruction ended too soon after the U.S. Civil War. Large majorities support the phrases "free speech" and "civil liberties" when asked, but only small minorities believe they should actually apply. In circumstances of communists speaking in public or rights for gays/lesbians etc. the results are often small minorities in the surveys.(2) It's also why the Ward Churchill case has such potential for reactionary exploitation. The fact is a large portion of the U.$. public would be in favor of some kind of majority-rule regime like in Iran (just not with Islam as the majority group).
With hyper-active court tactics, and the aid of Florida law that says the governor's way stands until a court rules otherwise, the Schindler family's trying to reinsert a feeding tube for the vegetable Schiavo created a momentary opening for the assertion of executive power. In this case the executive power is in the hands of Jeb Bush in Florida and George W. Bush in Washington. This causes the fascination of today's Franco-inclined fascists, led most articulately by Patrick Buchanan; even though Buchanan appears to think that the Bush boys are not the stuff of counter-revolution he wants.
The divisions within fascism
One of the reasons that the Schiavo case appears apolitical to most Amerikans is the ideological history behind euthanasia. Specifically, the pro-Hitler fascists were for it and used it the most extensively. The pro-Pope fascists opposed euthanasia and waged their only resistance to Hitler around the related issues during World War II, because for the most part Hitler agreed with Mussolini and Franco.
Ordinary Catholic people, with the support of Bishop Clemens von Galen, successfully protested and resisted Hitler's 'euthanasia' program. Some seventy thousand Germans deemed mentally infirm were put to death in the nineteen months from January 1940 to August 1941, many of them in the gas chambers that would be used later to kill Jews. The entire population of the village of Asberg in Bavaria, including Nazi Party members, turned out in February 1941 to protest the deportation of 'euthanasia' victims who were being bussed to their deaths.(3)
Thus, the Cardinal of England and Wales Cormac Murphy-O'Connor is historically accurate when he says in connection to Easter and Terri Schiavo in 2005 that from Catholics' point-of-view, euthanasia is also the road to eugenics. Hitler combined them both to attempt to create his master race. "'[The] terrible truth that it is the strong who decide the fate of the weak,'" he said.(4)
As in World War II when Catholics and Protestants split on the issue, today, the polls for George W. Bush have taken a dive, because white evangelical Protestants are divided on the question of Terri Schiavo.(5) The New York Times has suggested that George W. Bush and Jeb Bush are gearing up for the day when Jeb Bush runs for president, and so the polls of the general public do not matter because Jeb Bush would have to win the primaries first, and activists involved supporting the Schindler side of the Schiavo case would be most useful in such primaries.
On the other hand, euthanasia is the only issue of its kind where fascists divide and take completely opposite stands. So the winner of this struggle may also stake a claim about what kind of fascism should rule in the united $tates. Terri Schiavo is the Francoite movement's chance.
MIM does not recognize a "right to die" for eating disorders, because we do not want to see any supposed heroes of the weight control fight. People who want to be such heroes should campaign with MIM specifically against corporate profits to sell and advertise junk food, and not try to be a hero by slow suicide. Nonetheless, despite our position, we do not want to see the Bush executives overstep their roles and effectively abolish the role of the judicial branch of government in the united $tates. There are many others like us, because the two issues are separate, contrary to what the militant wing of the Democratic Party might say in partisan heat. A group of disabled staged a protest at Schiavo's hospice as others have across the country. They left their wheelchairs and said "not dead yet" in protest on the ground,(6) because euthanasia is a big issue for the disabled, as it is for communists generally. That does not mean disabled rights activists have to support sending the National Guard to overrule the courts. On this point, some of the "Left" badly miscalculates in the heat of partisan passion. What is good for the international proletariat is not necessarily what is good for the Democratic Party.
Timing matters
Earlier in the discussion about Terri Schiavo, Amerikans framed the question in their typical fashion boring and bourgeois by the standards of the rest of the world. In that context, the militant wing of the Democratic Party might decide to match the militant wing of the Republican Party. Not for nothing Howard Dean is now the Establishment of the Democratic Party as chair. As predicted by mim3@mim.org prior to the election, the loss of all branches of the government in 2004 leaves some Democrats looking for people to fight and convert people. The Terri Schiavo case may be an irresistible opening for such Democrats.
Later in the struggle when the pro-Schindler side started demonstrating and getting arrested and called for the National Guard to take Terri Schiavo to reinsert the feeding tube, the issue became something else, and Democratic partisanship in response to Republican partisanship was no longer hum-drum. At that point, the issue was no longer the "right to die," but the constitution, "checks and balances" and the potential for executive branch power grab. Had the Bush brothers styled themselves and prepared supporters as Catholic fascists, prior to 2005, they would have had an excellent chance to make use of the public's ignorance to abolish the judicial role with the Terri Schiavo case as a wedge. Luckily the Bush brothers were not in perfect position to take yet another step to dissolve the judiciary.
As it stands, the Schiavo case so far is only a dry-run, one we must learn from quickly. Jeb Bush has said "I'd love to" do something about Schiavo "but I can't." Hence, the effect is to leave the public with the thought of whether they'd prefer fascism or not. Despite all the Republican judges who made all the important decisions in the Schiavo case, the effect is to ask the new Francoite Amerikans to start a bigger movement against the court system as a whole. That's why it's important to understand the Schiavo case in a different light.
The importance of understanding the feminist side
A wide variety of so-called leftists and even so-called communists pay lip service to wimmin's liberation, but when push comes to shove they disown wimmin's liberation in a despicable way. This should not surprise those who have taken up MIM's line on gender in the bulk of imperialist countries, and are familiar with the ideologies of the various pseudo-feminists, but it is still disturbing when people who claim to uphold wimmin's liberation write many pages on how RepubliKKKans are trying to take advantage of life support controversies as a wedge issue but say absolutely nothing about the oppression of disabled persyns and wimmin. It's another case where what is good for Democrats is not good for wimmin's issues.
The recent, well-publicized battle over Terri Schiavo is just a case in point. All sorts of leftists have let the religious supporters of Schiavo's parents frame the debate in terms of " " versus "life," "family privacy" versus "government intrusion," and also "husbands' rights" versus "parents' rights." Repeat: they have let them frame the debate in these ways, and they have done little to say anything new even within these limitations.
The thing to notice is that all of the above ways of framing the debate completely miss the point about gender and Schiavo's situation as a manifestation of patriarchal oppression. However, the "choice" versus "life" dichotomy is particularly devastating because it is so confusing to the otherwise feminist-minded. What the proponents of "choice" Liberalism in the context of Terri Schiavo are implying is that Schiavo's supposed decision to forego life support or life-sustaining treatment is analogous to a womyn's decision to have an abortion. The idea is that foregoing life support and obtaining an abortion both have to do with people's controlling their own bodies. It is easy to see how this argument would confuse Liberal pseudo-feminists, but it is a sign that the pseudo-feminists do not take gender issues seriously in their own right and independently from the Democratic Party and the Amerikan way of politics.
The world's gender-oppressed people can do better than that, and they deserve better than that.
There is no denying the immensity of the religious right's efforts around Terri Schiavo. At the same time, this does not mean that MIM can let the settler religious zealots displace and silence genuine feminist understandings of Schiavo's situation. It would be a profound disservice to gender-oppressed people if MIM were to cower before the religious right every time it attacked and let them decide the terms of the debate. This is especially the case when MIM is not trying to use the rulers' media. There is no point in watering down the analysis of gender. There is simply no excuse; even if it were to use the rulers' media, MIM could do things to bring attention to the patriarchy's role in Terri Schiavo's situation.
But this is what the motley crew of Schiavo's right-to-die activists has done by incessantly harping on the religious right's threat to Liberalism and the privacy of the sacrosanct "family" (ignoring the different power relations within the patriarchal family): it has silenced any feminist understanding of Terri Schiavo's situation. It has done this mainly for the sake of agitating against another Republikan Presidential victory in 2008--to the extent that the right-to-die crowd has had political aims. Partisan Democrats oppose the re-insertion of Schiavo's feeding tube for political reasons and preoccupy themselves with short-term gains and do not care if wimmin's equality and wimmin's real liberation fall by the wayside.
The comparisons between Schiavo and wimmin wanting to get abortions is bizarre even from a liberal viewpoint. First of all, the availability of abortion affects a particular group of individuals, not everyone. This is one clue that abortion struggles are not just about individual humyn choice. It is a womyn's choice, and this is among other reasons (like the inability to reform class society to remove the economic reasons for abortion) why abortion availability is a legitimate feminist demand including in imperialist countries. MIM certainly does not support abortion from a liberal perspective, but from a revolutionary proletarian feminist viewpoint. In today's world, abortion availability mitigates class, gender and national oppression. MIM aims to end patriarchy forever in addition to supporting abortion availability.
In contrast, taking presumably unconscious wimmin off life support does not benefit the wimmin, but benefits patriarchal society especially when it was patriarchal society that caused Terri Schiavo's condition in the first place. It deprives wimmin of the ability to send any kind of signal to patriarchal society and forces wimmin to incur all the costs of the patriarchy-caused violence. Meanwhile, the gender oppressors, husbands and parents, get to go on with their lives. Being pressured into foregoing life support in this context is simply not the same thing as obtaining an abortion to improve one's life expectancy.
If Schiavo were suffering and conscious, then MIM would say her problems are more complicated. MIM does not support gender oppressors' exploiting of actually suffering wimmin for religious reasons or to make themselves feel better religiously on Easter Sunday or whatever. As it is, Terri Schiavo is not consciously suffering according to the whole right-to-die crowd itself, so this suffering issue should not even be a factor. However, even if Schiavo were suffering, the ability of the patriarchy to kill its gender-oppressed victims must be hampered. As previous MIM Notes and Web site articles on Terri Schiavo have pointed out, this is bigger than one persyn, Schiavo. People die or become disabled as a direct consequence of the romance culture every day, and there are also child abuse survivors for instance who are consequently on life support. The known abusers can still have a say in whether to terminate the life support. At the very least, progressives must call this out and point to an alternative where gender oppressors do not get to oppress people and then dispose of their bodies.
"Parents and guardians often retain the right of making medical decisions, such as forgoing cardiopulmonary resuscitation or other LSMT, despite being suspected, accused, or even convicted of child abuse. Court proceedings that appoint a guardian ad litem for the purpose of protecting the abused child often limit the role of the guardian to determine appropriate placement of the child after discharge. A separate court proceeding may be necessary to ask for the appointment of a guardian ad litem for medical decisions---an appointment made necessary given the parent or guardian's conflict of interest for making such decisions."(7)
This writer has come across "progressive" people on the street who are frankly tired of seeing Schiavo on television and openly and unapologetically say that the "bitch" should just die already in what is clearly a patriarchal context. This is an undercurrent in the thinking of some of those who oppose the re-insertion of Schiavo's feeding tube, and it is exactly these people who need to be irritated out of their contentment. It just so petty for them to whine about Schiavo's life "dragging on" when it isn't even costing the oppressor government that much in medical welfare costs. (Schiavo receives Medicaid benefits reportedly.)(8)
Another undercurrent, concentrated in the labor aristocracy, is concerned with government intrusion in the AmeriKKKan "working family" and even that keeping Schiavo alive, partly with Medicaid money, is a burden on the Amerikan so-called worker. This why some so-called socialists have addressed the Terri Schiavo issue. But this is just a form of same patriarchal ideology that says wimmin can advance only at the expense of the rest of the population.
Thus, it is not surprising to see a Web page on the Internet for example bearing an edited photo of a homeless persyn sitting next to a computer-generated "Screw Terri; feed me" sign. It mocks both the lumpen proletariat and wimmin.(9)
"Anyways, on the issue of the protesters outside of the facility Terri is at I full encourage someone to get a big 'KILL THE BITCH' sign, maybe something more creative note it's 11:30 and I'm not really thinking. Just stand outside for a while see how long you last. You have mine, as well as the full communitys support."(9)
A poster on Craigslist Minneapolis wonders: "Why can't they let that brain dead bitch Terri Schiavo Die!!! Stop waisting our f***ing money!!! I will never vote for those bastard republicans!!!!"(10)
Another writer, in the Abortion Forum at SpeakOut.com no less, remarks:
"Whatever you think of the debate surrounding this thing can we all agree that the media should stop showing pictures of this drooling bitch. My stomach turns every time I see this brain dead bitch with her fists all balled up and spit coming out of her mouth as she stares into the air and her mother and father pretend she can hear and respond to their comments. . . .
"If this broad is as alive as Tom Delay and the republican liars say she is then give her the keys to the car and let her go to MacDonald’s like the rest of us. They can't do that because the bitch is as brain dead as most republicans. . . .
"The other reason they can't let her go to MacDonald's is that when her brain was working she ate food and then threw it up, (Bulimia) so even before her brain stopped working she was a goddamn moron who literally asked for this to happen to her. . . .
"I propose we bring back the freak shows then her family can parade this grotesque bitch around to the circus where she belongs."(11)
Further raising the specter of patriarchal violence, "GBush" says: "If she can't give head, the bitch is dead."(12)
Again, MIM does not agree with the "arguments" of the religious fanatics, Demokrats or Republikans, who support re-inserting a feeding tube into Terri Schiavo. But make no mistake about it: it is exactly these angry Demokrats and "independents" illustrated above that various "progressives," who support Schiavo's supposed to right to die from patriarchy, seek to unite themselves with to the point of abandoning feminist principles--that is, if they had any to start with.
Even when AmeriKKKans were much more likely to oppose abortion legally and morally than support the re-insertion of Schiavo's feeding tube--suggesting that many Amerikans who oppose abortion would have supported the removal of Schiavo's feeding tube--the pseudo-feminists still don't get it.(13)
Those who think ending patriarchy is just a liberal matter of having "choices" with patriarchal society are complicit in this situation where someone can oppose abortion availability and support a womyn's supposed right to die from patriarchy.
Notes:
1. Miami Herald, posted on the Internet and available at as of March 26 at: http://www.ohio.com/mld/beaconjournal/11229201.htm
2. The Washington Post did a nice summary of some of the research. According to the Washington Post, Amerikans have become more tolerant to minorities recently, but the article does not do justice to all the concrete issues raised by these surveys. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/polls/wat/archive/wat121498.htm 3. John Cornwell, Hitler's Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII (NY: Viking, 1999), pp. 198-9.
4. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/03/27/ncorm27.xml&sSheet=/portal/2005/03/27/ixportaltop.html
5. http://www.voanews.com/english/2005-03-25-voa58.cfm
6. New York Times 28Mar05, http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/28/national/28scene.html 7. Committee on Child Abuse and Neglect and Committee on Bioethics, "Forgoing Life-Sustaining Medical Treatment in Abused Children," Pediatrics 106, no. 5 (2000): 1151-1153, http://aappolicy.aappublications.org/cgi/content/full/pediatrics%3b106/5/1151
8. Estanislao Oziewicz, "Who has been paying the medical bills?" March 29, 2005, globeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/TPStory/LAC/20050329/SCHIAVOASK29/TPHealth/
9. "There's no feeding tubes in Heaven," post at 1:09 AM on March 28, 2005, http://www.livejournal.com/community/kill_terri/
10. "Damn those bleeding heart Republicans!!!! Let the bitch Schiavo Die!!!" March 21, 2005, http://minneapolis.craigslist.org/pol/64723310.html
11. "Terri Schindler-Schiavo," March 21, 2005, http://speakout.com/forum_view.asp?Forum=Abortion&MID=27189&mMID=27189
12. GBush, "re: If Terri Schiavo is killed, Republicans will pay a political price," post at 1:49 AM on March 20, 2005, http://www.fuckfrance.com/read.html?postid=1140925&replies=92&page=2
13. Jeffrey M. Jones, "Majority Agrees With Judge's Decision in Schiavo Case," March 23, 2005, http://www.gallup.com/poll/content/login.aspx?ci=15358