We need a word - a good, insulting, unfair label - for the legions of officials and others who would be Nazis under Hitler, Fascists under Mussolini, Communists under Stalin or in present-day China, Trujollistas under Trujillo in the Dominican Republic in the 1950s, Baathists undur Saddam, Iraqi government officials under the U.S. occupation, or vocal supporters of the status quo here or anywhere they can get some personal power and privilege out of it.
It's simply inaccurate to call them nazis or fascists or neocons or anything else because that suggests a level of ideological commitment that isn't there. And we can't call them all Colin Powell.
I suggest "power lusters."
Calling attention to this behavior isn't just a matter of smart politics now, as useful as it is to expose this source of support for stupidity and evil when stupidity and evil is in power. When anyone else is in power, there will be power lusters in - or trying to get in - that camp too.
So, when power lusters attach themselves to a movement for justice and liberty, the movement risks losing its direction and purpose. Professional sycophants will try to take control of a change that real believers, true fighters for social justice, and your average activists have won.
That is, undoubtedly, looking ahead a bit.
But beware the power lusters. Without them, no dictatorship or totalitarian state would be possible. They are also a great threat to progress toward justice and liberty as social movements gain power. But no loyalty oath is necessary nor useful. Keeping a movement true to the radical notion of justice and liberty for all, which requires constant work to diffuse power widely and to replace privileges with rights, will drive the power lusters out, into the opposition, because this work done right leaves no room for the accumulation of power.
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