My right-wing brother accused me of “tottering on the edge of fascism” recently when I listed “disseminating covert propaganda disguised as news broadcasts” among the many illegal things BushCo should be impeached for. My brother’s argument was that the liberal MSM promotes fascist group-think, so the administration has to combat that by putting out its own side of the story. He was actually arguing that government propaganda is protected free speech! As we all learned from our Former Dittohead friend Jim Derych, right-wingers easily dismiss anything that threatens their worldview as being a product of the imaginary “liberal media,” but my brother was taking it a step further.
Being called a fascist is nothing new; we on the left are often assailed by right-wingers calling us fascists. But I was a little stunned when my brother said it to me. Obviously, his argument is ridiculous, and when I challenged him to define fascism, all he came up with was that fascists don’t tolerate any differing opinions (oddly, earlier in our conversation he had said that the Democrats are “fragmented”… fragmented group-think, that’s a new one for me). To back his claim that fascism resides on the left end of the political spectrum, my brother cited the fact that the Nazi party was the National Socialist German Workers Party. But I can’t decide if he was being totally dishonest, or if he simply doesn’t recognize Hitler using the exact same tactic the GOP uses when they name things like the Clear Skies initiative, the Healthy Forests initiative, and the Help America Vote Act. No doubt it is a little of each.
Anyhow, I emailed my brother a few quotes about fascism to help clear up his misunderstanding. I didn’t go with a politician’s, historian’s, or pundit’s definition of fascism, either. Instead I went right to the source: Benito Mussolini.
Follow me across the break for the quotes and my analysis I sent to my brother, as well as some quotes from a piece written by Vice President Henry Wallace in 1944.
I have reformatted and rewritten my analysis a bit from what I sent to my brother.
“Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power.” — Benito Mussolini (from Encyclopedia Italiana, Giovanni Gentile, editor).
“Fascism is an extreme right-wing ideology which embraces nationalism as the transcendent value of society. The rise of Fascism relies upon the manipulation of populist sentiment in times of national crisis. Based on fundamentalist revolutionary ideas, Fascism defines itself through intense xenophobia, militarism, and supremacist ideals. Although secular in nature, Fascism’s emphasis on mythic beliefs such as divine mandates, racial imperatives, and violent struggle places highly concentrated power in the hands of a self-selected elite from whom all authority flows to lesser elites, such as law enforcement, intellectuals, and the media.” — translation of Mussolini’s diary by Ben Tripp
Now substitute in the word neo-conservatism for fascism and see how well it fits.
“Neo-Conservatism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power.”
Eisenhower warned us about the dangers of the military industrial complex, but this goes even further. GOP loyalists simply flow back and forth between government and corporations with government contracts (many of them of the no-bid variety). The New York Times has revealed that 90 former officials at the Department of Homeland Security or the White House Office of Homeland Security are now “executives, consultants or lobbyists for companies that collectively do billions of dollars’ worth of domestic security business.”
See also the K Street Project, the Carlyle Group, Haliburton/KBR, etc. Now the GOP rubber stamp Congress has refused to investigate the awarding of contracts by the executive branch. And don’t forget the bankruptcy bill written by the credit industry, the Medicare drug plan written by the pharmaceutical industry, and the energy policy authored by the energy companies. If these examples don’t demonstrate a merger of state and corporate power, then I don’t know what would. This is why I think the name BushCo fits them so well.
The Democrats are certainly not off the hook on encouraging corporatism. In particular, DLC Democrats are often beholden to corporate interests. But it is nowhere near the extent to which the GOP has become the tool of corporations. The only way I can see to fix this problem is through the elimination of ALL lobbyist gifts or contributions, strict policing of quid pro quos, and extending the period required before a former government official can take a job with a corporation that does business with the government.
“Neo-Conservatism is an extreme right-wing ideology which embraces nationalism as the transcendent value of society. The rise of Neo-Conservatism relies upon the manipulation of populist sentiment in times of national crisis. Based on fundamentalist revolutionary ideas, Neo-Conservatism defines itself through intense xenophobia, militarism, and supremacist ideals. Although secular in nature, Neo-Conservatism’s emphasis on mythic beliefs such as divine mandates, racial imperatives, and violent struggle places highly concentrated power in the hands of a self-selected elite from whom all authority flows to lesser elites, such as law enforcement, intellectuals, and the media.”
Let’s break it down point by point (I regroup things a little bit for analytical purposes):
“Extreme right-wing ideology which embraces nationalism as the transcendent value of society”: This is why they keep bringing up the flag burning amendment. It is a total waste of time, unless you consider the political capital they are trying to gain by pumping up nationalist sentiment.
The GOP and their surrogates in the media keep saying that anyone who disagrees with them is an America-hating, pro-terrorist traitor. My own brother even called me a fascist for saying that BushCo’s illegal, covert propaganda doesn’t belong on TV. Look at Sean Hannity’s books: “Deliver Us From Evil: Defeating Terrorism, Despotism, and Liberalism”, and “Let Freedom Ring: Winning the War of Liberty Over Liberalism.” He paints liberalism as the opposite of nationalism, as anti-liberty, and as in league with terrorists! This ignores the fact that America was conceived as a liberal nation and has only made progress when striving to become more liberal. A simple review of U.S. history shows how conservatives have consistently been on the wrong side of every issue.
Regardless, through their propaganda and hate-mongers, the GOP has obscured, obfuscated, lied, and turned reality on its head when it comes to defining American values. They attack Democratic veterans as being anti-troops while claiming the politicians on their side who never went to war are the real patriots. The latest example is the right-wing reaction to the Hamdan ruling. Can you believe they are actually saying it is anti-American to abide by the rule of law, the Constitution, and our treaties?
“Manipulation of populist sentiment in times of national crisis”: This one is easy: the misuse of 9/11 to get authorization for the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Administration officials intentionally inflated the sense of crises by fanning the fear of “weapons of mass destruction.” Each election cycle, they work to scare people into voting GOP against their own interests by saying the terrorists want Democrats to win or that the terrorists will hit us for sure if Dems are elected (among other things). Every time Kerry started to gain on or pass Bush in the polls, DHS would announce another Orange Alert (yet we have had NONE since the Presidential election… how odd). Now they are using “cut and run” rhetoric when talking about the Democratic plan to strategically redeploy our troops and end the occupation of Iraq, playing on people’s fear of losing a war.
“Fundamentalist revolutionary ideas”: It doesn’t get much more fundamentalist than the Christian fundamentalism of the Religious Right. Is Christian fundamentalism really revolutionary, you ask? Well, they do want to turn America into a theocracy, so I’d have to say, “Yes.” Just look at the pushes to overturn Roe v Wade and for an anti-gay marriage amendment. They even call their agenda a “culture war,” so revolutionary fundamentalism is the perfect descriptor for the Religious Right, IMHO.
“Xenophobia, supremacist ideals, and racial imperatives”: The good old Boogeyman strategy. Though they haven’t strictly adhered to racial/ethnic lines, there is no doubt that they use scapegoats to blame America’s problems on. The GOP and their mouth-pieces routinely scapegoat gays, immigrants, blacks, secularists, humanists, Hollywood, elitists, bad guys, ter’rists, Arabs, and others for all of the U.S.A.’s problems. Of course, their favorite scapegoat of all is liberals and the imaginary liberal media. Anyone who stands against them is automatically labeled a liberal, and in the same breath is called a grave threat to America. Look at the titles of Coulter’s books: “Godless”, “Treason”, “Slander”. Like Hannity’s books cited above, these books demonize liberalism, flat out lying about liberals and the liberal philosophy, and turn reality inside-out and upside-down.
“Divine Mandates”: George W. Bush loves to use Good vs Evil imagery (ie. “Axis of Evil”; “evildoers”). And who can forget when Bush called the U.S. attacks in the Middle East a crusade? He also said that freedom isn’t America’s gift to the world, but God’s gift to the world. The implication is that the U.S. military is an instrument of God! You don’t get much more divine a mandate than that. You could probably put the efforts to overturn Roe and outlaw gay marriage into this category as well… I’m sure the fundamentalists would.
“Militarism and violent struggle”: Just look at the PNAC’s Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources For a New Century if you really want to see how frighteningly hawkish these folks really are. Once you have read that, you understand that one reason the GOP doesn’t want to withdraw from Iraq is that militarism and war has become such a defining element of their philosophy. They believe that America is the lone superpower remaining post-cold war, and as such, is in a unique position to gain hegemony over the globe – military, economic, and cultural. To accomplish this goal will require a vast military machine deployed worldwide, and especially in resource rich but unstable regions like the Middle East. We must fight and win multiple simultaneous wars to let everyone on the planet know that we cannot be challenged. Scary, huh?
And even if we do manage to end the occupation of Iraq, the administration has this one covered by declaring that we are in a perpetual “General War on Terror.” The right is also fixated on Bush as Commander in Chief. They might as well dress him up in a military uniform like Idi Amin or Joseph Stalin. By focusing on the Commander in Chief role, the right thinks they can justify a huge expansion in executive authority. Our civil liberties are being trampled and the power of the executive is being expanded beyond anything the Framers imagined, all in the name of fighting the never-ending GWOT.
“Highly concentrated power in the hands of a self-selected elite from whom all authority flows”: Some people call them the “Haves and Have-mores” but Bush calls them his base. Is it any wonder that all of the BushCo policies are aimed at helping the elites? From the repeal of the estate tax that would only effect the very wealthy, to the cutting of income taxes on the wealthiest 2%, to extending the lower rate on dividends, to the tax amnesty for companies hiding profits overseas, to weakening environmental protections, to refusing to raise the minimum wage. When Bush declares, “I’m the decider, not you” he wants everyone to know that he is in the seat of power. When the right calls Bush the Commander in Chief, they do so to reinforce his authority.
“Authority flows to lesser elites, such as law enforcement, intellectuals, and the media.”: I disagree with the notion that “intellectuals” have fallen in with this crowd – hence the right is constantly harping about the evil, liberal college professors. On the other hand, maybe this means people like the right wing think tanks and “puditry” – people like Grover Norquist. I wouldn’t call them intellectuals, but maybe some on the right would.
What about law enforcement? Honestly, I’m not too sure; I just don’t know enough about the subject. The purpose of consolidating law enforcement into the Department of Homeland Security was to allow better coordination between agencies, but it also may allow a higher degree of control from the top down than there was before. However, DHS was a Democratic proposal, so I’m not sure we can lay that one on BushCo. What I do know is that the administration actually had to do a purge at the CIA to get rid of the people who disagreed with BushCo’s misuse of intelligence and outing of covert operative Valerie Plame-Wilson and her WMD-monitoring operation. The NSA has been at the center of the illegal domestic spying programs.
Please note the “media” in this quote. This would be the Fox News, Hannity, Limbaugh, Coulter, Malkin, and O’Reilly types – lying vitriol spewers – as well as the Judith Miller, David Brooks, Robert Novak, and Charles Krauthammer types – so-called “respectable journalists” – who are little more than propagandists who shill for the administration. It is scary how the GOP talking points reverberate through the echo chamber and onto the public airwaves and pages. One of them, Tony Snow, has now ascended the ladder into the inner circle of the administration – you don’t get a more clear example of power flowing from the top to an obedient “lesser elite” than that.
I suppose you could make the case that the power has actually flowed in the other direction, from the media up, before it is then fed back to the media in a sort of positive feedback loop. This explains why there is no liberal media anymore: they are all trying to get a peice of this pie being handed down from the top.
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As I was re-writing this to post here, Thom Hartmann made me aware of the piece written by Vice President Henry Wallace for the New York Times in 1944. Hartmann wrote about the Wallace article two years ago on Common Dreams (The Ghost of Vice President Wallace Warns: “It Can Happen Here” ). Wallace’s article was a warning about creeping fascism and how Americans could recognize and combat American fascists. Like me, Wallace turned to Mussolini for his definition of fascism as corporatism. I forwarded Hartmann’s article to my brother as further back-up for the Mussolini email.
The dangerous American fascist is the man who wants to do in the United States in an American way what Hitler did in Germany in a Prussian way. The American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information. With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more power. The American fascists are most easily recognized by their deliberate perversion of truth and fact. Their newspapers and propaganda carefully cultivate every fissure of disunity, every crack in the common front against fascism. They use every opportunity to impugn democracy.
Holy crapoly! This is exactly what I was just talking about with the media: Fox News, Hannity, Limbaugh, Coulter, Malkin, O’Reilly, Judith Miller, David Brooks, Robert Novak, and Charles Krauthammer. Throw in the covert propaganda disseminated by the administration and the GOP talking points, and I would say our public information is severely poisoned. And that poison is designed, in part, to divide Americans. Again, when Bush said he is “a uniter, not a divider,” he was saying the opposite of what he meant. Bill Clinton echoed this sentiment when he spoke at the 2004 Democratic National Convention and said that the GOP wants us divided. And the GOP talking points often contain B.S. about the Democrats being disunified or fragmented.
If we define an American fascist as one who in case of conflict puts money and power ahead of human beings, then there are undoubtedly several million fascists in the United States. There are probably several hundred thousand if we narrow the definition to include only those who in their search for money and power are ruthless and deceitful. … They are patriotic in time of war because it is to their interest to be so, but in time of peace they follow power and the dollar wherever they may lead. They claim to be super-patriots, but they would destroy every liberty guaranteed by the Constitution. They demand free enterprise, but are the spokesmen for monopoly and vested interest. Their final objective toward which all their deceit is directed is to capture political power so that, using the power of the state and the power of the market simultaneously, they may keep the common man in eternal subjection.
The Neo-cons know that the ruthless pursuit of profits and power does not play very well with the public. But, by following the PNAC and Mussolini outlines, BushCo is able to hide their deceit and ruthless pursuit of profits and power behind the disingenuous mask of patriotism during wartime. As I stated above, this wartime front is used to trample our rights and anyone who questions the breach of our rights is immediately labeled a traitor or terrorist sympathizer. It is sick and twisted.
Still another danger is represented by those who, paying lip service to democracy and the common welfare, in their insatiable greed for money and the power which money gives, do not hesitate surreptitiously to evade the laws designed to safeguard the public from monopolistic extortion. American fascists of this stamp were clandestinely aligned with their German counterparts before the war, and are even now preparing to resume where they left off, after ‘the present unpleasantness’ ceases. [These monopolists] are willing to jeopardize the structure of American liberty to gain some temporary advantage. Monopolists who fear competition and who distrust democracy because it stands for equal opportunity would like to secure their position against small and energetic enterprise [companies]. In an effort to eliminate the possibility of any rival growing up, some monopolists would sacrifice democracy itself.
While we have few true monopolies, we have a lot of industries dominated by what I would consider cartels: a few large companies in collusion to control the market and that don’t really compete with each other. The oil/energy cartel, pharmacy cartel, defense cartel, communications cartel, media cartel… I’m sure I’m missing a lot of other examples here. Even companies that are not cartels, like Wal-Mart, could fit this quote. Wal-Mart moves into a community and squashes all the locally owned businesses.
There is a very important underlying truth here: There is no such thing as a free market. When there is no regulation, monopolies and cartels stomp out any competition, and abuse the market, laborers, consumers, and the environment. So, the choice is a regulated market with real competition, or an unregulated market controlled by monopolies and cartels that prevent any real competition. BushCo has done nothing but weaken, eliminate, or fail to enforce existing regulations.
The symptoms of fascist thinking are colored by environment and adapted to immediate circumstances. But always and everywhere they can be identified by their appeal to prejudice and by the desire to play upon the fears and vanities of different groups in order to gain power. It is no coincidence that the growth of modern tyrants has in every case been heralded by the growth of prejudice. It may be shocking to some people in this country to realize that, without meaning to do so, they hold views in common with Hitler when they preach discrimination…
Here Wallace covers the boogeyman strategy. The neo-cons are certainly more subtle in most ways about expressing and spreading their hate, but it is still there and plays a major role in their political strategy. Wallace is saying that it is a difference of degree rather than kind that separates the holocaust from the anti-gay marriage amendment or the voter suppression of minorities.
So, between Mussolini and Wallace, I think it is pretty clear that fascism lies on the other side of the political spectrum, and that the GOP is not just tottering on the edge… but has already plunged headlong into the pit.
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I never heard back from my brother on the Mussolini quotes or Hartmann article I sent him. He probably didn’t even read them. If he did, he probably didn’t recognize the parallels to BushCo I pointed out. No doubt, his brain put up its force-field before he started reading and all the parallels were automatically deflected away as group-think from the liberal media. One of my other brothers says I am too blunt and confrontational, but when someone calls me a fascist, how am I supposed to react?
One last thing… Here is the new GOP logo I created. Should I send this to my brother, or is it too blunt and confrontational?
