Critical Analysis
Living Under Fascism
By Davidson Loehr
First UU Church of Austin
Editor’s note:
This article was first posted in UUA News, on the website of
the Unitarian Universalist Association, on November 7, 2004.
Unfortunately, its timeliness only increases with each passing day. -
B.Moore
"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." -- Vice President Henry Wallace, 1944
February 5, 2005
-- You may wonder why anyone would try to use the word ‘fascism’ in a
serious discussion of where America is today. It sounds like cheap
name-calling, or melodramatic allusion to a slew of old war movies. But I
am serious. I don’t mean it as name-calling at all. I mean to persuade you
that the style of governing into which America has slid is most accurately
described as fascism, and that the necessary implications of this fact are
rightly regarded as terrifying. That’s what I am about here. And even if I
don’t persuade you, I hope to raise the level of your thinking about who
and where we are now, to add some nuance and perhaps some useful insights.
The word comes from the Latin word Fasces,
denoting a bundle of sticks tied together. The individual sticks
represented citizens, and the bundle represented the state. The message of
this metaphor was that it was the bundle that was significant, not the
individual sticks. If it sounds un-American, it’s worth knowing that the
Roman Fasces appear on the wall behind the Speaker’s podium in the chamber
of the US House of Representatives.
Still, it’s an unlikely word. When most
people hear the word "fascism" they may think of the racism and
anti-Semitism of Mussolini and Hitler. It is true that the use of force
and the scapegoating of fringe groups are part of every fascism. But there
was also an economic dimension of fascism, known in Europe during the
1920s and '30s as "corporatism," which was an essential ingredient of
Mussolini’s and Hitler’s tyrannies. So-called corporatism was adopted in
Italy and Germany during the 1930s and was held up as a model by quite a
few intellectuals and policy makers in the United States and Europe.
As I mentioned a few weeks ago (in The
Corporation Will Eat Your Soul), Fortune magazine ran a cover story on
Mussolini in 1934, praising his fascism for its ability to break worker
unions, disempower workers and transfer huge sums of money to those who
controlled the money rather than those who earned it.
Few Americans are aware of or can recall
how so many Americans and Europeans viewed economic fascism as the wave of
the future during the 1930s. Yet reviewing our past may help shed light on
our present, and point the way to a better future. So I want to begin by
looking back to the last time fascism posed a serious threat to America.
In Sinclair Lewis's 1935 novel "It Can't
Happen Here," a conservative southern politician is helped to the
presidency by a nationally syndicated radio talk show host. The politician
- Buzz Windrip - runs his campaign on family values, the flag, and
patriotism. Windrip and the talk show host portray advocates of
traditional American democracy ? those concerned with individual rights
and freedoms ? as anti-American. That was 69 years ago.
One of the most outspoken American
fascists from the 1930s was economist Lawrence Dennis. In his 1936 book,
The Coming American Fascism ? a coming which he anticipated and cheered ?
Dennis declared that defenders of ?18th-century Americanism? were sure to
become "the laughing stock of their own countrymen." The big stumbling
block to the development of economic fascism, Dennis bemoaned, was
"liberal norms of law or constitutional guarantees of private rights."
So it is important for us to recognize
that, as an economic system, fascism was widely accepted in the 1920s and
'30s, and nearly worshiped by some powerful American industrialists. And
fascism has always, and explicitly, been opposed to liberalism of all
kinds.
Mussolini, who helped create modern
fascism, viewed liberal ideas as the enemy. "The Fascist conception of
life," he wrote, "stresses the importance of the State and accepts the
individual only in so far as his interests coincide with the State. It is
opposed to classical liberalism [which] denied the State in the name of
the individual; Fascism reasserts the rights of the State as expressing
the real essence of the individual." (In 1932 Mussolini wrote, with the
help of Giovanni Gentile, an entry for the Italian Encyclopedia on the
definition of fascism. You can
read the whole entry)
Mussolini thought it was unnatural for a
government to protect individual rights: The essence of fascism, he
believed, is that government should be the master, not the servant, of the
people.
Still, fascism is a word that is
completely foreign to most of us. We need to know what it is, and how we
can know it when we see it.
In an essay coyly titled ?Fascism
Anyone?,? Dr. Lawrence Britt, a political scientist, identifies
social and political agendas common to fascist regimes. His comparisons of
Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, Suharto, and Pinochet yielded this list of 14 ?identifying
characteristics of fascism.? (The following article is from Free
Inquiry magazine, Volume 23, Number 2. (Read
it). See how familiar they sound.
Fascist regimes tend to make constant use
of patriotic mottos, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia.
Flags are seen everywhere, as are flag symbols on clothing and in public
displays.
Because of fear of enemies and the need
for security, the people in fascist regimes are persuaded that human
rights can be ignored in certain cases because of ?need.? The people tend
to look the other way or even approve of torture, summary executions,
assassinations, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc.
The people are rallied into a unifying
patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or
foe: racial, ethnic or religious minorities; liberals; communists;
socialists, terrorists, etc.
Even when there are widespread domestic
problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of government
funding, and the domestic agenda is neglected. Soldiers and military
service are glamorized.
The governments of fascist nations tend to
be almost exclusively male-dominated. Under fascist regimes, traditional
gender roles are made more rigid. Opposition to abortion is high, as is
homophobia and anti-gay legislation and national policy.
Sometimes the media are directly
controlled by the government, but in other cases, the media are indirectly
controlled by government regulation, or sympathetic media spokespeople and
executives. Censorship, especially in war time, is very common.
Fear is used as a motivational tool by the
government over the masses.
Governments in fascist nations tend to use
the most common religion in the nation as a tool to manipulate public
opinion. Religious rhetoric and terminology is common from government
leaders, even when the major tenets of the religion are diametrically
opposed to the government's policies or actions.
The industrial and business aristocracy of
a fascist nation often are the ones who put the government leaders into
power, creating a mutually beneficial business/government relationship and
power elite.
Because the organizing power of labor is
the only real threat to a fascist government, labor unions are either
eliminated entirely, or are severely suppressed.
Fascist nations tend to promote and
tolerate open hostility to higher education, and academia. It is not
uncommon for professors and other academics to be censored or even
arrested. Free expression in the arts is openly attacked, and governments
often refuse to fund the arts.
Under fascist regimes, the police are
given almost limitless power to enforce laws. The people are often willing
to overlook police abuses and even forego civil liberties in the name of
patriotism. There is often a national police force with virtually
unlimited power in fascist nations
Fascist regimes almost always are governed
by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other to government
positions and use governmental power and authority to protect their
friends from accountability. It is not uncommon in fascist regimes for
national resources and even treasures to be appropriated or even outright
stolen by government leaders.
Sometimes elections in fascist nations are
a complete sham. Other times elections are manipulated by smear campaigns
against or even assassination of opposition candidates, use of legislation
to control voting numbers or political district boundaries, and
manipulation of the media. Fascist nations also typically use their
judiciaries to manipulate or control elections.
This list will be familiar to students of
political science. But it should be familiar to students of religion as
well, for much of it mirrors the social and political agenda of religious
fundamentalisms worldwide. It is both accurate and helpful for us to
understand fundamentalism as religious fascism, and fascism as political
fundamentalism. They both come from very primitive parts of us that have
always been the default setting of our species: amity toward our in-group,
enmity toward out-groups, hierarchical deference to alpha male figures, a
powerful identification with our territory, and so forth. It is that
brutal default setting that all civilizations have tried to raise us
above, but it is always a fragile thing, civilization, and has to be
achieved over and over and over again.
But, again, this is not America’s first
encounter with fascism.
In early 1944, the New York Times asked
Vice President Henry Wallace to, as Wallace noted, ?write a piece
answering the following questions: What is a fascist? How many fascists
have we? How dangerous are they??
Vice President Wallace's answer to those
questions was published in The New York Times on April 9, 1944, at the
height of the war against the Axis powers of Germany and Japan. See how
much you think his statements apply to our society today.
?The really dangerous American fascist,?
Wallace wrote, ?? 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.?
In his strongest indictment of the tide of
fascism he saw rising in America, Wallace added,
?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.?
By these standards, a few of today’s
weapons for keeping the common people in eternal subjection include NAFTA,
the World Trade Organization, union-busting, cutting worker benefits while
increasing CEO pay, elimination of worker benefits, security and pensions,
rapacious credit card interest, and outsourcing of jobs ? not to mention
the largest prison system in the world.
The Perfect Storm
Our current descent into fascism came
about through a kind of ?Perfect Storm,? a confluence of three unrelated
but mutually supportive schools of thought.
The first stream of thought was the
imperialistic dream of the Project for the New American Century. I
don’t believe anyone can understand the past four years without reading
the Project for the New American Century, published in September
2000 and authored by many who have been prominent players in the Bush
administrations, including Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Richard Perle and
Donald Kagan to name only a few. This report saw the fall of Communism as
a call for America to become the military rulers of the world, to
establish a new worldwide empire. They spelled out the military
enhancements we would need, then noted, sadly, that these wonderful plans
would take a long time, unless there could be a catastrophic and
catalyzing event like a new Pearl Harbor that would let the leaders turn
America into a military and militarist country. There was no clear
interest in religion in this report, and no clear concern with local
economic policies.
A second powerful stream must be credited
to Pat Robertson and his Christian Reconstructionists, or Dominionists.
Long dismissed by most of us as a screwball, the Dominionist style of
Christianity which he has been preaching since the early 1980s is now the
most powerful religious voice in the Bush administration.
Katherine Yurica, who transcribed over
1300 pages of interviews from Pat Robertson’s ?700 Club? shows in the
1980s, has shown how Robertson and his chosen guests consistently, openly
and passionately argued that
America must become a theocracy under the
control of Christian Dominionists.
Robertson is on record saying democracy is a terrible form of government
unless it is run by his kind of Christians. He also rails constantly
against taxing the rich, against public education, social programs and
welfare ? and prefers Deuteronomy 28 over the teachings of Jesus. He is
clear that women must remain homebound as obedient servants of men, and
that abortions, like homosexuals, should not be allowed. Robertson has
also been clear that other kinds of Christians, including Episcopalians
and Presbyterians, are enemies of Christ. (The Yurica Report -?Despoiling
America? by Katherine Yurica)
The third major component of this
Perfect Storm has been the desire of very wealthy Americans and
corporate CEOs for a plutocracy that will favor profits by the very rich
and disempowerment of the vast majority of American workers, the
destruction of workers? unions, and the alliance of government to help
achieve these greedy goals. It is a condition some have called socialism
for the rich, capitalism for the poor, and which others recognize as a
reincarnation of Social Darwinism. This strain of thought has been present
throughout American history. Seventy years ago, they tried to finance a
military coup to replace Franlkin Delano Roosevelt and establish General
Smedley Butler as a fascist dictator in 1934. Fortunately, the picked a
general who really was a patriot; he refused, reported the scheme, and
spoke and wrote about it. As Canadian law professor Joel Bakan wrote in
the book and movie The Corporation, they have now achieved their
coup without firing a shot.
Our plutocrats have had no particular
interest in religion. Their global interests are with an imperialist
empire, and their domestic goals are in undoing all the New Deal reforms
of Franklin Delano Roosevelt that enabled the rise of America’s middle
class after WWII.
Another ill wind in this Perfect Storm is
more important than its crudity might suggest: it was President Clinton’s
sleazy sex with a young but eager intern in the White House. This
incident, and Clinton’s
equally sleazy lying about it, focused the certainties of conservatives on
the fact that ?liberals? had neither moral compass nor moral concern, and
therefore represented a dangerous threat to the moral fiber of America.
While the effects of this may be hard to quantify, I think they were
profound.
These ?storm? components have no necessary
connection, and come from different groups of thinkers, many of whom
wouldn’t even like one another. But together, they form a nearly complete
web of command and control, which has finally gained control of America
and, they hope, of the world.
What’s coming
When all fascisms exhibit the same social
and political agendas (the 14 points listed by Britt), then it is not hard
to predict where a new fascist uprising will lead. And it is not hard
(sic). The actions of fascists and the social and political effects of
fascism and fundamentalism are clear and sobering. Here is some of what’s
coming, what will be happening in our country in the next few years:
-
The theft of all social security funds,
to be transferred to those who control money, and the increasing
destitution of all those dependent on social security and social welfare
programs.
-
Rising numbers of uninsured people in
this country that already has the highest percentage of citizens without
health insurance in the developed world.
-
Increased loss of funding for public
education combined with increased support for vouchers, urging Americans
to entrust their children’s education to Christian schools.
-
More restrictions on civil liberties as
America is turned into the police state necessary for fascism to work.
-
Withdrawal of virtually all funding for
National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting System. At their best,
these media sometimes encourage critical questioning, so they are
correctly seen as enemies of the state’s official stories.
-
The reinstatement of a draft, from which
the children of privileged parents will again be mostly exempt, leaving
our poorest children to fight and die in wars of imperialism and greed
that could never benefit them anyway. (That was my one-sentence
Veterans? Day sermon for this year.)
-
More imperialistic invasions: of Iran
and others, and the construction of a huge permanent embassy in Iraq.
-
More restrictions on speech, under the
flag of national security.
-
Control of the internet to remove or
cripple it as an instrument of free communication that is exempt from
government control. This will be presented as a necessary anti-terrorist
measure.
-
Efforts to remove the tax-exempt status
of churches like this one, and to characterize them as anti-American.
-
Tighter control of the editorial bias of
almost all media, and demonization of the few media they are unable to
control ? the New York Times, for instance.
-
Continued outsourcing of jobs, including
more white-collar jobs, to produce greater profits for those who control
the money and direct the society, while simultaneously reducing
America’s workers to a more desperate and powerless status.
-
Moves in the banking industry to make it
impossible for an increasing number of Americans to own their homes. As
they did in the 1930s, those who control the money know that it is to
their advantage and profit to keep others renting rather than owning.
-
Criminalization of those who protest, as
un-American, with arrests, detentions and harassment increasing. We
already have a higher percentage of our citizens in prison than any
other country in the world. That percentage will increase.
In the near future, it will be illegal or
at least dangerous to say the things I have said here this morning. In the
fascist story, these things are un-American. In the real history of a
democratic America,
they were seen as profoundly patriotic, as the kind of critical questions
that kept the American spirit alive ? the kind of questions, incidentally,
that our media were supposed to be pressing.
Can these schemes work? I don’t think so.
I think they are murderous, rapacious and insane. But I don’t know. Maybe
they can. Similar schemes have worked in countries like Chile, where a
democracy in which over 90% voted has been reduced to one in which only
about 20% vote because they say, as Americans are learning to say, that it
no longer matters who you vote for.
Hope
In the meantime, is there any hope, or do
we just band together like lemmings and dive off a cliff? Yes, there is
always hope, though at times it is more hidden, as it is now.
As some critics are now saying, and as I
have been preaching and writing for almost twenty years, America’s
liberals need to grow beyond political liberalism, with its often
self-absorbed focus on individual rights to the exclusion of individual
responsibilities to the larger society. Liberals will have to construct a
more complete vision with moral and religious grounding. That does not
mean confessional Christianity. It means the legitimate heir to
Christianity. Such a legitimate heir need not be a religion, though it
must have clear moral power, and be able to attract the minds and hearts
of a voting majority of Americans.
And the new liberal vision must be larger
than that of the conservative religious vision that will be appointing
judges, writing laws and bending the cultural norms toward hatred and
exclusion for the foreseeable future. The conservatives deserve a lot of
admiration. They have spent the last thirty years studying American
politics, forming their vision and learning how to gain control in the
political system. And it worked; they have won. Even if liberals can
develop a bigger vision, they still have all that time-consuming work to
do. It won’t be fast. It isn’t even clear that liberals will be willing to
do it; they may instead prefer to go down with the ship they’re used to.
One man who has been tireless in his
investigations and critiques of America’s slide into fascism is Michael C.
Ruppert, whose postings usually read as though he is wound way too tight.
But he offers four pieces of advice about what we can do now, and they
seem reality-based enough to pass on to you.
This is America; they’re all about
money:
-
First, he says you should get out of
debt.
-
Second is to spend your money and time
on things that give you energy and provide you with useful information.
-
Third is to stop spending a penny with
major banks, news media and corporations that feed you lies and leave
you angry and exhausted.
-
And fourth is to learn how money works
and use it like a (political) weapon ? as he predicts the rest of the
world will be doing against us.
That’s advice written this week. Another
bit of advice comes from sixty years ago, from Roosevelt’s
Vice President, Henry Wallace. Wallace said,
?Democracy, to crush fascism
internally, must...develop the ability to keep people fully employed and
at the same time balance the budget. It must put human beings first and
dollars second. It must appeal to reason and decency and not to violence
and deceit. We must not tolerate oppressive government or industrial
oligarchy in the form of monopolies and cartels.?
Still another way to understand fascism is
as a kind of colonization. A simple definition of ?colonization?
is that it takes people’s stories away, and assigns them supportive roles
in stories that empower others at their expense. When you are taxed to
support a government that uses you as a means to serve the ends of others,
you are ? ironically ? in a state of taxation without representation.
That’s where this country started, and it’s where we are now.
I don’t know the next step. I’m not a
political activist; I’m only a preacher. But whatever you do, whatever we
do, I hope that we can remember some very basic things that I think of as
eternally true. One is that the vast majority of people are good decent
people who mean and do as well as they know how. Very few people are evil,
though some are. But we all live in families where some of our blood
relatives support things we hate. I believe they mean well, and the way to
rebuild broken bridges is through greater understanding, compassion, and a
reality-based story that is more inclusive and empowering for the vast
majority of us.
Those who want to live in a reality-based
story rather than as serfs in an ideology designed to transfer power,
possibility and hope to a small ruling elite have much long and hard work
to do, individually and collectively. It will not be either easy or quick.
But we will do it. We will go forward in
hope and in courage. Let us seek that better path, and find the courage to
take it ? step, by step, by step.
Copyright: UUA News
Feb 7, 2005
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