[News] The New Fascism

[Anti-Imperialist News]

George Jackson:

"Settle your quarrels, come together, understand 
the reality of our situation, understand that 
fascism is already here, that people are already 
dying who could be saved, that generations more 
will live poor butchered half-lives if you fail 
to act. Do what must be done, discover your 
humanity and your love in revolution" ­ Blood In My Eye


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http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/011706I.shtml

The New Fascism

By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Perspective

Tuesday 17 January 2006

The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to 
the stormy present. The occasion is piled high 
with difficulty, and we must rise with the 
occasion. As our case is new, so we must think 
anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall 
ourselves, and then we shall save our country.
- Abraham Lincoln

     Say "fascism" to anyone you meet, and you 
will conjure images of coal-scuttle helmets, of 
Nazi boot-heels clicking in terrible unison down 
Berlin streets during dark days that only a few 
remaining among the living remember. Each day, 
members of the generation that heard those heels 
for themselves go into the ground, taking with 
them whispered words of warning. I saw it for 
myself, they whisper before they pass. See this 
tattooed number? See this scar? It happened. It was real.

     Say "fascism" to anyone you meet, and you 
will be greeted with the boilerplate response of 
the blithely overconfident: such a thing cannot 
happen here. This is the United States of 
America, land of the free and home of the brave. 
Ours is a nation of laws, of checks and balances, 
of righteousness and decency. Our laws and 
traditions stand as a bulwark against the rise of 
totalitarian madness. It cannot happen here. Thus 
we are indoctrinated into the school of our own assumed greatness.

     "We must disenthrall ourselves," said 
Abraham Lincoln, and so we must, because it can 
happen here. It is already happening. All the 
parroted recitations of grade school civics 
cannot erase the fact that a new order is rising. 
Call it "secret fascism" or "smiley-faced 
fascism." Call it a quiet dictatorship. Call it 
what you like, but it is here with us in America today, and it is growing.

     To be sure, there are no coal-scuttle 
helmets lined in ranks down our broad avenues, no 
Tonton Macoute savaging dissidents, no Khmer 
Rouge slaughtering intellectuals and herding 
citizens from cities to die by the millions on 
roads littered with skulls. The core strength of 
our new fascism is that it speaks softly. It does 
not present itself in such an obvious way that 
those who subsist on the dogmas of our greatness 
can point and say there, there it is, I see it.

     This new fascism is not fed only by lies, 
though to be sure the lies are there in 
preposterous abundance. This new fascism is fed 
by myths, our myths, the myths by which we rock 
ourselves to sleep. This new fascism is in truth 
an elemental fascism, reborn today by a 
confluence of events; the diligent work of the 
few, in combination with the passivity of the 
many, have brought forth this new order.

     The writer Umberto Eco, in a 1995 essay 
titled "Ur-Fascism," delineated several core 
elements that have existed in one form or another 
in every fascist state in history: "Parliamentary 
democracy is by definition rotten, because it 
does not represent the voice of the people, which 
is that of the sublime leader. Doctrine outstrips 
reason, and science is always suspect. The 
national identity is provided by the nation's 
enemies. Argument is tantamount to treason. 
Perpetually at war, the state must govern with 
the instruments of fear. Citizens do not act; 
they play the supporting role of 'the people' in 
the grand opera that is the state."

     Take these one at a time.

     "Parliamentary democracy is by definition 
rotten, because it does not represent the voice 
of the people, which is that of the sublime leader."

     George W. Bush has all but gelded Congress 
in recent months, attaching so-called "signing 
statements" to a variety of laws, which state 
that the president may act beyond the laws 
whenever he so chooses. The United States, 
fashioned as a republic, has as its voice the 
congressional body. This is all but finished. To 
cement his victory over the parliamentary system, 
Bush has put forth one Samuel Alito for the 
Supreme Court, a man who believes in the ultimate 
power of the one leader over the many. The gelded 
congress does not appear able to keep this man 
from the high court, thus rendering the balancing 
branches of government into a satellite system of the Executive.

     "Doctrine outstrips reason, and science is always suspect."

     The supremacy of religious fundamentalism 
within and without government carries this banner 
before all others. What is reason in the face of 
the zealot's faith? Science has become a 
watered-down vessel for Intelligent Design, and 
the incontrovertible truths of empirical data are 
slapped aside. Spencer Tracy, in the film 
"Inherit the Wind," bellows the warning here: 
"Fanaticism and ignorance is forever busy, and 
needs feeding. And soon, your Honor, with banners 
flying and with drums beating we'll be marching 
backward, backward, through the glorious ages of 
that sixteenth century, when bigots burned the 
man who dared to bring enlightenment and intelligence to the human mind."

     "The national identity is provided by the nation's enemies."

     This has been with us for generations now. 
Our nation defined ourselves through a comparison 
to the Nazis, to the Imperial Japanese, and then 
through decades of comparison to Communism. 
Terrorism has supplanted all of these, hammered 
into place on a Tuesday in September by the 
actions of madmen. We are not them, all is 
justified in the struggle against them, and so we are defined.


     "Argument is tantamount to treason."
     All one need do to see this in action is 
spend some hours with the Fox News channel. 
Freedom fries. Why do you hate America? You are 
with us or you are with the terrorists. Watch what you say.

     "Perpetually at war, the state must govern with the instruments of fear."

     The manipulation of this population by fear 
has been ham-fisted, to be sure, but has also 
been cruelly effective. We do not want the 
evidence to be a mushroom cloud. Weapons of mass 
destruction and al Qaeda in Iraq. Nuclear designs 
in Iran. Plastic sheeting and duct tape. Orange 
alert. Argument becomes tantamount to treason 
simply because everyone has been made to feel 
fear at all times. A frightened populace is 
easily governed, and governs itself; this lesson 
was well-learned in the duck-and-cover days of 
the Cold War. Those lessons have been masterfully 
applied once again. Today, the citizenry polices 
itself, and the herd moves as one body. Even the 
surveillance of innocent citizens by the state is 
brushed off as a necessary evil. Remember: you are being watched.

     "Citizens do not act; they play the 
supporting role of 'the people' in the grand opera that is the state."

     Once, we lived by the glorious simplicity of 
the vote. Casting a ballot was the single most 
patriotic duty a citizen could perform, an 
affirmation of all we held dear and true. Today, 
we live in the nation of the vanishing voter. 
Power has been so far removed from the people by 
those with money and influence that most see 
voting as a waste of time. Add to this the 
growing control of the implements of voting and 
vote-counting by partisan corporations, and the 
rule of We the People is left in ashes.

     We must disenthrall ourselves from the idea 
that our institutions, our traditions, the 
barriers that protect us from absolute and 
authoritarian powers, cannot be broken down. They 
are being dismantled a brick at a time. The 
separation of powers has already been 
annihilated. It is a whispered fascism, not yet 
marching down your street or pounding upon your 
door in the dead of night. But it is here, and it 
is laying deep roots. We must listen beyond the 
whispered fascism of today to the shouted fascism 
of tomorrow. We must look beyond the lies and the 
myths, beyond the dogmas by which we sleep.


-- 
thanks Frankhttp://www.humboldt.net/~fcieciorka

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