[News] Living Under Fascism

[News at freedomarchives.org]

A fairly Eurocentric view, but interesting none the less.

Living Under Fascism

Davidson Loehr
First UU Church of Austin

11/07/04 "UUA News" -- 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 at 
<http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/mussolini-fascism.html>http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/mussolini-fascism.html 
)

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 at 
<http://www.secularhumanism.org/library/fi/britt_23_2.htm>http://www.secularhumanism.org/library/fi/britt_23_2.htm 
) See how familiar they sound.
    * Powerful and Continuing Nationalism
    * 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.
    *
    * Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights
    * 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.
    *
    * Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause
    * 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.
    *
    * Supremacy of the Military
    * 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.
    *
    * Rampant Sexism
    * 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.
    *
    * Controlled Mass Media
    * 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.
    *
    * Obsession with National Security
    * Fear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses.
    *
    * Religion and Government are Intertwined
    * 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.
    *
    * Corporate Power is Protected
    * 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.
    *
    * Labor Power is Suppressed
    * 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.
    *
    * Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts
    * 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.
    *
    * Obsession with Crime and Punishment
    * 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
    *
    * Rampant Cronyism and Corruption
    * 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.
    *
    * Fraudulent Elections
    * 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, Rumsfleid, 
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. Search under this 
name, or for “Despoiling America” by Katherine Yurica on the internet.)
    *
    * 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. 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. (from 
<http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/110504_snap_out.shtml>http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/110504_snap_out.shtml 
)

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: <http://www.uua.org/news/2004/voting/sermon_loehr.html>UUA News

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