Fascism

[Jcrowley]

Fascists

By John T. Flynn

11/02/06 Information Clearing House "This article is excerpted from chapter ten of As We Go Marching (1944). The entire ebook is available in PDF as a free download.]

First let us state our definition of fascism. It is, put briefly, a system of social organization in which the political state is a dictatorship supported by a political elite and in which the economic society is an autarchic capitalism, enclosed and planned, in which the government assumes responsibility for creating adequate purchasing power through the instrumentality of national debt and in which militarism is adopted as a great economic project for creating work as well as a great romantic project in the service of the imperialist state.

Broken down, it includes these devices:
1 A government whose powers are unrestrained.
2 A leader who is a dictator, absolute in power but responsible to the party which is a preferred elite.
3 An economic system in which production and distribution are carried on by private owners but in accordance with plans made by the state directly or under its immediate supervision.
4 These plans involve control of all the instruments of production and distribution through great government bureaus which have the power to make regulations or directives with the force of law.
5 They involve also the comprehensive integration of government and private finances, under which investment is directed and regimented by the government, so that while ownership is private and production is carried on by private owners there is a type of socialization of investment, of the financial aspects of production. By this means the state, which by law and by regulation can exercise a powerful control over industry, can enormously expand and complete that control by assuming the role of banker and partner.
6 They involve also the device of creating streams of purchasing power by federal government borrowing and spending as a permanent institution.
7 As a necessary consequence of all this, militarism becomes an inevitable part of the system since it provides the easiest means of draining great numbers annually from the labor market and of creating a tremendous industry for the production of arms for defense, which industry is supported wholly by government borrowing and spending.
8 Imperialism becomes an essential element of such a system where that is possible – particularly in the strong states, since the whole fascist system, despite its promises of abundance, necessitates great financial and personal sacrifices, which people cannot be induced to make in the interest of the ordinary objectives of civil life and which they will submit to only when they are presented with some national crusade or adventure on the heroic model touching deeply the springs of chauvinistic pride, interest, and feeling.

Where these elements are found, there is fascism, by whatever name the system is called. And it now becomes our task to look very briefly into our own society and to see to what extent the seeds of this system are present here and to what degree they are being cultivated and by whom.

In the light of all this we can see how far afield we can be led by those who seek for the roots of fascism by snooping around among those futile crackpot or deliberately subversive groups which flourish feebly under the leadership of various small-bore führers. Some of these groups are outright anti-American like the Bundists. Such an organization had nothing to do and can have nothing to do with introducing a new system of society into America. Its object was to assist Hitler in so far as it could in his war aims here. It was an enemy organization – and an incredibly foolish one.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15478.htm

This is how fascism comes—with a show of opposition followed by high-profile compromise, and assurances that all is well.

This is how fascism comes, with quiet streets and everyone going about their business

[HCE SuiGeneris]

1. It is all too real,

and with each infringement of our rights, we sink deeper into the quicksand. :mad: :grr: :mad: :grr: :mad:

How much more of can we tolerate?

[seemslikeadream]

2. A Different Kind Of Fascism (1967)

Huey Long once said, "Fascism will come to America in the name of anti-fascism." I'm afraid, based on my own experience, that fascism will come to America in the name of national security."


Jim Garrison, Playboy Interview, October, 1967
"What worries me deeply, and I have seen it exemplified in this case, is that we in America are in great danger of slowly evolving into a proto-fascist state. It will be a different kind of fascist state from the one of the Germans evolved; theirs grew out of depression and promised bread and work, while ours, curiously enough, seems to be emerging from prosperity. But in the final analysis, it's based on power and on the inability to put human goals and human conscience above the dictates of the state. Its origins can be traced in the tremendous war machine we've built since 1945, the "military-industrial complex" that Eisenhower vainly warned us about, which now dominates every aspect of our life. The power of the states and Congress has gradually been abandoned to the Executive Department, because of war conditions; and we've seen the creation of an arrogant, swollen bureaucratic complex totally unfettered by the checks and balances of the Constitution.

In a very real and terrifying sense, our Government is the CIA and the Pentagon, with Congress reduced to a debating society. Of course, you can't spot this trend to fascism by casually looking around. You can't look for such familiar signs as the swastika, because they won't be there. We won't build Dachaus and Auschwitzes; the clever manipulation of the mass media is creating a concentration camp of the mind that promises to be far more effective in keeping the populace in line. We're not going to wake up one morning and suddenly find ourselves in gray uniforms goose-stepping off to work. But this isn't the test. The test is: What happens to the individual who dissents? In Nazi Germany, he was physically destroyed; here, the process is more subtle, but the end results can be the same.

I've learned enough about the machinations of the CIA in the past year to know that this is no longer the dreamworld America I once believed in. The imperatives of the population explosion, which almost inevitably will lessen our belief in the sanctity of the individual human life, combined with the awesome power of the CIA and the defense establishment, seem destined to seal the fate of the America I knew as a child and bring us into a new Orwellian world where the citizen exists for the state and where raw power justifies any and every immoral act. I've always had a kind of knee-jerk trust in my Government's basic integrity, whatever political blunders it may make. But I've come to realize that in Washington, deceiving and manipulating the public are viewed by some as the natural prerogatives of office. Huey Long once said, "Fascism will come to America in the name of anti-fascism." I'm afraid, based on my own experience, that fascism will come to America in the name of national security."
http://bloggn.petercase.com/index.cfm?mode=entry&entry=EDD5A9E8-B5E7-3F32-9B66DC5F74C7AE1F



Song of Choice

Early every year, seeds are growing
Unseen, unheard, they lie beneath the ground
Would you know before the leaves are showing
That with weeds all your garden will abound?

If you close your eyes, stop your ears
Hold your mouth, how can you know?
The seeds you cannot see may not be there
The seeds you cannot hear may never grow

In January you've still got the choice
You can cut the weeds before they start to bud
If you leave them to grow higher, they'll silence your voice
And in December you may pay with your blood

Close your eyes, stop your ears
Close your mouth and take it slow
Let others take the lead and you bring up the rear
And later you can say you didn't know

Everyday another vulture takes flight
There's another danger born every morning
In the darkness of your blindness the beast will learn to bite
How can you fight if you can't recognize a warning?

Close your eyes, stop your ears
Close your mouth and then you know
Let others take the lead and you bring up the rear
And later you can say you didn't know

Today you may earn a living wage
Tomorrow you may be on the dole
Though there's millions going hungry, you needn't disengage
For it's them, not you, that's fallen in the hole

It's alright for you if you run with the pack
It's alright if you agree with all they do
If the fascist's party slowly climbing back
It's not here yet, so what's it got to do with you?

The weeds are all around us and they're growing
It will soon be too late for the knife
If you leave them on the wind that around the world is blowing
You may pay for your silence with your life

Close your eyes, stop your ears
Close your mouth, they're never there
And if it happens here, they'll never come for you
Because they'll know you really didn't care

Peggy Seeger

[cool user name]

3. Kicking ... n/t

[Jcrowley]

4. Is America Becoming Fascist?

Roger Griffin holds that fascism consists of a series of myths: fascism is anti-liberal, anti-conservative, anti-rational, charismatic, socialist, totalitarian, racist and eclectic. If one wishes to argue that American fascism is by no means socialist, one ought to take a deeper look at National Socialism's conception of socialism. In a sense, America is a socialist society, to the extent that the government is the main driving force behind technology, innovation, and science: the military-industrial-academic complex. National Socialism was comforting to the right-wing capitalists because they believed that socialism was a convenient fiction for the ideology. Nevertheless, fascism's vitalism and holism militate against any facile interpretations of what socialism means. Fascism is eclectic and ready to abandon economic principle for what it perceives as the greater good of the nation. As Sternhell has described it for Germany, fascism in the American synthesis is a cultural rebellion, a revolutionary ideology; totalitarianism is of its very essence. There are more similarities than immediately apparent between Marxism as it was put into practice by the twentieth century communist states, and "socialist" ideology put into practice by the various fascist states.

Ian Kershaw has evaluated the similarities between Italian and German fascism:

Extreme chauvinistic nationalism with pronounced imperialistic expansionist tendencies;
an anti-socialist, anti-Marxist thrust aimed at the destruction of working class organizations and their Marxist political philosophy;
the basis in a mass party drawing from all sectors of society, though with pronounced support in the middle class and proving attractive to the peasantry and to various uprooted or highly unstable sectors of the population;
fixation on a charismatic, plebiscitary, legitimized leader;
. extreme intolerance towards all oppositional and presumed oppositional groups, expressed through vicious terror, open violence and ruthless repression;
. glorification of militarism and war, heightened by the backlash to the comprehensive socio-political crisis in Europe arising from the First World War;
. dependence upon an "alliance" with existing elites, industrial, agrarian, military and bureaucratic, for their political breakthrough;
. and, at least an initial function, despite a populist-revolutionary anti-establishment rhetoric, in the stabilization or restoration of social order and capitalist structures.

Viewed in this perspective, in only the last few months America has advanced tremendously from emerging to realized fascism. Its imperialist and expansionist tendencies need to be couched less and less in Wilsonian idealist terms for mass acceptance. Unions can still be considered an oppositional, populist force, but working class cohesion has nearly been destroyed. Still, it needs to be said that instead of fascism appealing across class and geographical lines, the country remains divided between the liberal (urban, coastal) and proto-fascist (rural, Southern) factions. Also, the plebiscitary leader has not yet fully emerged. Oppositional groups are often self-silencing, but the most of the ruling establishment continues to practice a mild form of liberalism, and hopes that if things get too out of hand it can mobilize public opinion against brutal suppression. Although not all elites have yet been co-opted, think of Dershowitz's advocacy of torture and Larry Summers's patriotic swing. There is general agreement on militaristic aims. The attempted stabilization of the social order in the form of the culture wars fought in the previous decade is one of the less appreciated manifestations of emerging fascism.

George Mosse describes fascism as viewing itself in a permanent state of war, to mobilize masculine virile energy, enlisting the masses as "foot soldiers of a civic religion." As Mosse points out, fascism seeks a higher form of democracy even as it rejects the customary forms of representative government. Propaganda is pervasive in America; we only need to delineate its descent from the Nazi form. Mosse rejects the notion that fascism ruled through terror; "it was built upon a popular consensus." Fascism is a higher consensus seeking to bring about the "new man" rooted in Christian doctrine. Can there be a better description of the nineties American culture wars instigated by the proto-fascists than the following?:

When fascists spoke of culture, they meant a proper attitude toward life: encompassing the ability to accept a faith, the work ethic, and discipline, but also receptivity to art and the appreciation of the native landscape. The true community was symbolized by factors opposed to materialism, by art and literature, the symbols of the past and the stereotypes of the present. The National Socialist emphasis upon myth, symbol, literature and art is indeed common to all fascism.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article3127.htm

The similarities between American fascism and particularly the National Socialist precedent, both historical and theoretical, are remarkable. Fascism is home, it is here to stay, and it better be countered with all the intellectual resources at our disposal. 

[OHdem10]

5. Here is a thought from someone who should know

"Fascism should be more appropriately called CORPORATISM
because it is a merger of state and Corporate Power"---Benito Mussolini

Do you find it interesting that every law or piece of legislation past few years) favored Business or Corporations. Last Christmas the Business Interests received 139 Billion under the disguise of "Jobs Bill". Could go on but will stop before I am in trouble , I hope.

[Cleita]

6. America is beyond fascism. We have become a totalitarian

banana republic.

[Jcrowley]

7. As energy supplies dwindle

Unlike Islamo-fascism, Energo-fascism will, in time, affect nearly every person on the planet. Either we will be compelled to participate in or finance foreign wars to secure vital supplies of energy, such as the current conflict in Iraq; or we will be at the mercy of those who control the energy spigot, like the customers of the Russian energy juggernaut Gazprom in Ukraine, Belarus, and Georgia; or sooner or later we may find ourselves under constant state surveillance, lest we consume more than our allotted share of fuel or engage in illicit energy transactions. This is not simply some future dystopian nightmare, but a potentially all-encompassing reality whose basic features, largely unnoticed, are developing today.


These include:


* The transformation of the U.S. military into a global oil protection service whose primary mission is to defend America's overseas sources of oil and natural gas, while patrolling the world's major pipelines and supply routes.


* The transformation of Russia into an energy superpower with control over Eurasia's largest supplies of oil and natural gas and the resolve to convert these assets into ever increasing political influence over neighboring states.


* A ruthless scramble among the great powers for the remaining oil, natural gas, and uranium reserves of Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, and Asia, accompanied by recurring military interventions, the constant installation and replacement of client regimes, systemic corruption and repression, and the continued impoverishment of the great majority of those who have the misfortune to inhabit such energy-rich regions.


* Increased state intrusion into, and surveillance of, public and private life as reliance on nuclear power grows, bringing with it an increased threat of sabotage, accident, and the diversion of fissionable materials into the hands of illicit nuclear proliferators.


Together, these and related phenomena constitute the basic characteristics of an emerging global Energo-fascism. Disparate as they may seem, they all share a common feature: increasing state involvement in the procurement, transportation, and allocation of energy supplies, accompanied by a greater inclination to employ force against those who resist the state's priorities in these areas. As in classical twentieth century fascism, the state will assume ever greater control over all aspects of public and private life in pursuit of what is said to be an essential national interest: the acquisition of sufficient energy to keep the economy functioning and public services (including the military) running.

<snip>

http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=157241

[pnorman]

8. The author of that book, John T. Flynn, was a very unusal person.

Here's one Google hit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_T._Flynn

It would be easy enough to condemn him as a right-wing anti-FDR isolationist, which is what he actually was. But he appeared to have been an intellectually honest person, and almost fanatically so. That to me is all that I require of a person, to warrant space on my bookshelf for his books.

pnorman

[Jcrowley]

9. Friendly Fascism

The following sections are excerpted from Friendly Fascism. This long book is dated in some respects, and reflects an Old Left sensibility, but it was ahead of its time as well. I can't possibly do it justice, so I'm just adapting a comparison between classical fascism and so-called "friendly fascism" to show how the idea can and has evolved. If you think on these points, you can find many examples of them in practice in our society.





IMPOSSIBILITY: IT COULDN'T HAPPEN
(pp. 331-5) The thought that some form of new fascism might possibly -- or even probably -- emerge in America is more than unpleasant. For many people in other countries, it is profoundly disturbing; for Americans, it is a source of stabbing anguish. For those who still see America as a source of inspiration and leadership, it would mean the destruction of the last best hope on Earth. Even for those who regard America as the center of world reaction, it suggest that things can become still worse than they are.

An immediate -- and all too human -- reaction among Americans, and friends of America, is to deny the possibility. In other countries it might happen -- but not here. In the Communist world , dictatorships of the proletariat or the Party ... Military juntas in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Nigeria, and many other places ... Other dictatorial styles in India, Pakistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the Philippines ... But nothing like this in the prosperous, enlightened nations of Western civilization and the Judeo-Christian tradition. Above all, not in the United States of America, not in the land of the free and the home of the brave....

But why not? Why is it impossible?

Many fo the arguments purporting to demonstrate impossibility actually demonstrate little more than an unwillingness to "think the unthinkable." Some people try to protect their sensibilities behind a tangle of terminological disputation. The word "fascism," they say, is an emotion-laden term of abuse, as though the brutal, inhuman realities beyhind other terms -- whether "manipulatory authoritarianism," "bureaucratic collectivism," or "military junta" -- do not also evoke deep human emotions. Some people argue that the future threat in America is socialist collectivism, not fascism, implying that those who detect a fascist danger are spreading leftist propaganda for the purpose of bringin on a different form of despotism. Other merely react to exaggerated claims that fascism is already here or is inevitable.

http://a4a.mahost.org/gross.html

[Jcrowley]

10. Fascism through less direct methods

Then, too, U.S. imperial control is exercised not by American governors and colonists, but by less direct methods (sometimes described as "neocolonialism"). This has involved the development of at least a dozen channels of influence operating within subordinate countries of the "Free World":


* The local subsidiaries or branches of transnational businesses, including banks


* U.S. foreign military bases, which reached a peak of more than 400 major bases (and 3,000 minor ones) in 30 countries


* The C.I.A. and other intelligence agencies


* U.S. agencies providing economic and military aid through loans, grants, and technical assistance


* U.S. embassies, legations, and consulates


* The local operations of U.S. media (radio, TV, magazines, cinema) and public relations and consulting firms


* The local operations of U.S. foundations, universities, and research and cultural institutions


* Local power centers and influential individuals, friendly or beholden to U.S. interests


* Local armed forces, including police, equipped or trained in whole or part by U.S. agencies


* Subordinate governments-like Brazil, the Philippines, and Iran under the Shah-capable of wielding strong influence in their regions


* Transnational regional agencies such as NATO, the European Economic Community and the Organization of American States


* Agencies of the United Nations, particularly the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund


While these channels of influence have frustrated the efforts of any U.S. ambassador to establish personal control and have pushed final coordinating responsibilities to the level of the White House and the president's National Security Council, the net result has been a remarkably flexible control system in which competing views on strategy and tactics make themselves felt and are resolved through mutual adjustment. When serious mistakes are made, they can be corrected without injury to the dominant sources of a system that can adjust, however painfully, to the loss of any single leader, no matter how prominent. During the Korean War, when General Douglas MacArthur erred in driving through North Korea toward the Chinese border (which brought the Chinese into the war and lost the U.S.-occupied portion of North Korea to the capitalist world), he was promptly replaced. When President Lyndon Johnson erred in overcommitting U.S. troops and resources to the Indochinese war, he was pressured into retiring from the 1968 presidential campaign. Moreover, when new conditions call for new policies, the leaders of transnational corporations may move flexibly where political and military leaders fear to tread-as with corporate initiatives in commercial relations with the Soviet Union, China, and Cuba.

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Fascism/Takeoff_NewCorpSociety_FF.html

[tbyg52]

11. "When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag, carrying a cross."

Sinclair Lewis