When the next big crisis in America occurs (war with Iran, new terrorist attacks, a flu pandemic, a stock market crash, double or triple digit inflation, etc.) what will become of what’s left of our Republic? Will it withstand the assault to our freedoms and liberties from the Radical Right, as it did during the era of the Great Depression or will our Republic end its days in tumult and political violence?
I don’t know, frankly, but let me explain why I am so concerned about our Nation’s future at this moment in time.
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We’re living on the edge in America.
On the edge of an economic meltdown. All the signs are there for anyone to see if they would only take their blinders off. Debt, both personal and government indebtedness, is at record highs. The greatest income inequality between those at the top of the wealth pyramid and the rest of us since the days of the Depression. An overvalued dollar. Massive trade deficits. An overextended military. Gas prices high and likely to head higher. Inflation ready to take off because of it. Our economy is literally operating on borrowed time.
Then throw in an executive branch determined to amass as much power to itself as possible, while invading the privacy rights of the majority of its citizens. A President who never met a war to which he could say “No.” A Constitution and Bill of Rights in tatters. An America reviled in the rest of the world for what we’ve done to Iraq, for our violations of International Conventions against the use of torture and for our belligerent and militant approach to foreign relations.
Combine that with political leadership in Congress that does nothing but debate the merits of Constitutional amendments to ban gay marriage, laws to ban flag burning and endless recriminations about the threat of illegal immigration. A Congress that has abandoned its function as a check on the power of the President in favor of open graft and a “safe” seat at the trough to keep feeding from the cesspit where political favors are traded daily for campaign contributions, free meals, junkets and (from all accounts) free access to prostitutes.
The final topper: a cheapened and coarsened political discourse sponsored by the ruling elite (and that can only mean Conservatives) and their sycophants in the media that trades in big lies, ugly rumors, smears, slanders, the “stab in the back” myth, hate and incitements to violence against all those who oppose them, from climate scientists to evolutionary biologists, from Mexican immigrants to gays and lesbians, from federal judges to government whistleblowers, and most of all anyone and everyone who considers themselves a liberal.
Personally, what I fear the most is that the next big crisis will trigger an outbreak of hard core fascism. Not the soft fascism of the current regime which flies under the radar of most people, but the kind that suspends liberties permanently and puts people in concentration camps. The kind where violence against its political opponents is not just encouraged among its supporters, but practiced by the State. The kind where genocide thrives.
Everything is in place for such a movement to rise to power. Corporate power aligned with the Radical Right, and political polarization in our country at levels not seen since the days preceding our Civil War. When the shit hits the proverbial fan, people will be angry. They will want to find a scapegoat to pin the blame upon for all that has gone wrong in their lives. And movement conservatives have been laying the groundwork for that moment for over 50 years.
Funded by wealthy individuals with a radical agenda to undo the accomplishments of the New Deal, and staffed by religious zealots who preach a doctrine of hatred in the name of Jesus Christ, they have been relentless in their demonization of “godless” liberals who “hate America” and in their own words represent a “fifth column” of “traitors” ready to hand over our country to whomever represents the current menace to our great society (Internationally Communism until 1989, but, since 9/11/01, International Terrorism).
But they do not stop pointing fingers merely at “liberals” just as Hitler did not stop at denouncing Social Democrats and Communists. A host of others, from GBLT communities with their alleged “gay agenda” to Hollywood Liberals (code name for Jews) with their so-called agenda to debase our culture and values, from Hispanics and their alleged dreams of Reconquista to Muslim Americans with their so-called obsession with jihad and martyrdom, have also assumed prominent positions in their litany of bigotry and blame. Even African Americans have not escaped their venom, as anyone who listened to talk radio in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina can attest.
In Rwanda, hate radio over a number of years encouraged the belief that the ethnic minority Tutsis were subhuman, vicious killers plotting the deaths of the majority Hutus. Under the direction of certain, truly evil Hutu leaders, who feared their loss of power under the Arusha Accords of 1993, hate radio broadcasts that they sponsored began airing increasingly virulent propaganda with the aim of inciting genocide against the Tutsi minority. As we all know now, those broadcasts were all too effective, and when the ruling Hutu President, Juvénal Habyarimana was assassinated, his death triggered a wave of revenge killings that soon devolved into the mass murder of Tutsis and moderate Hutus by the Hutu dominated military, extremist militias and gangs of young unemployed Hutus.
We like to think that such a thing could never happen here, in America. Yet our own history is replete with racist and nativist movements that have dominated political parties, and even entire regions of the country in the past. Such movements often come to the fore in times of national crisis, when people are most anxious about their future.
The Know Nothing Party rode to prominence in American politics in the years of the first great wave of Irish immigration to the United States. Similar movements arose on the West Coast in response the immigration from China, Japan and other Asian countries.
The Ku Klux Klan initially came to power in the South to terrorize newly freed blacks and set in motion a train of events that would ultimately lead to a century of lynchings and Jim Crow laws. The KKK’s fortunes would wax and wane over that period, but it remained a political power in many parts of the country even after the tide turned against its racist ideology in the 1950’s and 1960’s. Indeed, it still exists today.
Religious zealots who amassed great influence and power in the media and throughout the country by adapting radio to promote bigotry and hate are also nothing new in this country. The first “hate jock” was Father Charles Coughlin in the 1930’s during the Great Depression. His anti-Semitic views and fascist sympathies encouraged and supported the fascist organization, the Christian Front that was shut down by the FBI in 1940 when its plot to assassinate several Congressmen and ultimately establish the US as a fascist dictatorship was exposed.
Nor was the Christian Front alone during the 1930’s in plotting to overthrow our Republic and install a fascist dictatorship in its place. Indeed, many major industrialists and prominent Wall Street financiers plotted a military coup against Franklin Roosevelt in 1933, which would have created a fascist state. That coup fell apart only after the military man who was approached to lead troops into Washington, D.C., Marine General Smedley Butler, exposed the plot in testimony before the House Special Committee on Un-American Activities Authorized to Investigate Nazi Propaganda and Certain Other Propaganda Activities, other wise known as the McCormack-Dickstein Committee.
So not only can “it happen here”, we were very fortunate that it didn’t happen 73 years ago, before Roosevelt had time to put in place the New Deal policies, like Social Security, that today’s Republican Party radicals are trying so hard to dismantle under President Bush. Just imagine how 20th Century history would have played out with a fascist dictatorship in America aligned with Hitler’s Germany.
Now imagine how which current events could lead to something similar occurring today. A devastating terrorist attack on US soil. An economic collapse. Perhaps even a another catastrophe with results like Hurricane Katrina. A major loss of life by our military forces in the Persian Gulf. Any of these events could conceivably trigger widespread unrest, and political violence. Violence that might have as its end result the formation of a truly fascist security state with all that that entails: loss of liberty, the outlawing of progressive political parties and yes, even concentration camps (which, by the way, America first employed in the 19th Century, for what else would one call “Indian Reservations?”).
This is why denouncing the eliminationist rhetoric of the Coulter’s, Limbaugh’s and Savage’s of the world is important to me. We can’t simply ignore them, as some suggest, and hope that they’ll go away on their own. That simply isn’t going to happen. They have their own means of spreading their poisonous diatribes into the homes of millions of our fellow citizens, through hate talk radio, right wing publishing houses, Fox News, and (let’s be honest) other mainstream media outlets like CNN and the New York Times. We ignore them at our considerable peril.
Fascism
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Genocide
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Hate Radio
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Right Wing Pundits
