American Fascism

Since Donald Trump became the 45th American president, we hear a lot of talk and hinting about Fascism in America. It is important for us to be as clear as possible about our current condition.

Fascism is a form of authoritarianism. The government's powers have no limit. Popular opinion carries no weight. All power is in the hands of a fascist party. There are no elections. What laws there are, are decreed by different government officials. Citizens may not appeal the orders of the government to an independent judiciary. Citizens do not have any protection against the government police power. If the government believes you to be a threat to its power, they can arrest you and if they so choose kill you. You may disappear and never be heard of again.

In a fascist society there are no rights to privacy. Any organization you may belong to, is organized and run by the government. With the rise of a facist government, labor unions are turned into branches of the government as are other previously voluntary organizations. Clubs of stamp collectors, clubs of genealogists, garden clubs-- all become official state-sponsored organizations.

Fascist governments tend to be paranoid. They have their spies everywhere. Families are disrupted when some members belong to the official fascist party and spy on other members of the family who may be less enamored with the new government. It is not safe to make negative comments about the government in your workplace; someone may report your jokes to the police and you may find yourself arrested in a concentration camp before you know what hit you. The government controls education. The government takes books off library shelves that it regards as hostile to its own mission. The government decides that certain kinds of art and music are unacceptable. They may not be performed in public. Private performances expose the performers to government suspicion. The government declares certain groups of the population to be no longer legitimate citizens. In extreme cases, such as Nazi Germany, these select groups consisting of Jews, of homosexuals, of communists were slaughtered in large numbers.

The government institutes a reign of terror. Citizens who are disaffected will be very careful not to voice their criticisms for fear of disappearing in prison camps. The new fascist party and its government are in complete control.

Fascist governments are wild eyed nationalists. They incline towards military adventures in order to expand the nation's territory and power. They do not tire to boast of the superiority of their nation and its culture over other neighboring nations.

Can Americans in 2017 recognize themselves in this portrait?

Yes and no. We may point to President Trump’s "America First" rhetoric. But we need to acknowledge that American nationalism has been in the ascendant for a long time. We have invaded and bombed foreign countries in order to promote our particular form of government which we call "democracy." The belief that our institutions are superior to those of other countries has dominated American foreign policy for at least a century.

But our politics, you say, is not dominated by one party. After all we have the Democrats and the Republicans and they are at each others’ throat quite regularly. But this two-party system does raise interesting questions that need a lot more reflection than is possible here: it often seems to many people that we really have only one political party – the party of the rich and that those of us who are not rich are not represented.

We do have, we think, an independent judiciary. There are constitutional protections of citizens against the government. The government cannot just make you disappear and even kill you if that's what they feel like—unless you are undocumented.

The government cannot freely censor literature and art. It is not free to determine what children will learn in school. It is not independent of popular opinion about schools or cultural matters. It cannot simply cleanse libraries of books it considers a threat to its own power.

We do have private organizations that are not arms of the government. The local kids sports or poetry organizations are not under government or fascist party control. It would be completely illegal for the government to try to take over those private groups.

Moves in the direction of fascism are always a threat. Since 9/11 Congress has allowed the government new forms of supervision of private communications by citizens. It has allowed government police forces such as the FBI or CIA to interfere with private citizens and their property in ways which are of dubious legality. The freedoms we brag about are much more precarious than we are willing to admit and their defense is a continuing effort – an effort that is not always successful.

But none of that makes the US a fascist country. For most of us fascism is a constant threat, but not a reality.

Fascism is a constant threat but not a reality if you are a middle-class white person, especially if you are a man. Your world is very different if you are a black youngster or even a black adult – man or woman.

In 2016, long before Pres. Trump got elected, more than 250 black persons were killed by police. 34% of unarmed people killed by police were black men. Black men constitute 6% of the population of our country. Very few of the police involved in these killings were indicted. Even fewer were convicted.

If you are black in America your government resembles a fascist government much more closely. You may be arrested and killed pretty much at the discretion of the police. You have no recourse to the court system to protect you.

The Constitution protects citizens very unevenly. White middle-class citizens live in a more or less constitutional democracy. The country in which black Americans live resembles fascism a lot more closely.

And God help you if you are undocumented.

Is America a fascist country? There is no unambiguous answer to that question. The answer you get depends a whole lot on whom you ask and who you are. Sadly, white citizens do not frequently enough recognize that Black citizens live in a very different America from that inhabited by Whites.

Creeping Fascism?

Not too long ago President Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act. Most of it concerns funding for the military but at the end there are some sections that essentially allow the military to arrest American citizens, suspected of connections with terrorism, without warrants and to hold them indefinitely without bringing them before a judge for an arraignment. This part of the act is now in litigation. A federal judge in New York has declared those sections unconstitutional, but it is not clear that the government will respect that judicial decision.

Even more recently, a story in the New York Times reveals that since 2002 the United States government has been spying on its own citizens. The National Security Agency, established for spying abroad, since 2002 has used a programs written by one William Binney for espionage on the Soviet Union to collect immense amounts of data about every American citizens, to be stored in a very large computer facility under construction in Utah. Binney has spoken out about this top secret program--”Stellar Wind”--concerned that it was clearly illegal, convened the Constitution and Bill of Rights and constitutes a serious threat to our democracy. Spying on its citizens is typical of autocratic governments.

Here are two examples of the government blatantly ignoring the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. The freedoms of American citizens apparently do not count for much in the eyes of the present administration, or of its predecessors under George W. Bush.

Is this the beginning of fascism in America?

Fascism is a complex phenomenon. One of its chief characteristics is an authoritarian government that has no regard for individual liberties and constitutional protections of free speech or against arbitrary arrest and indefinite detention. Fascist governments tend to be very nationalistic; they are supportive of large corporations, and are vicious in their persecution of labor organizations. The directors of large corporations have a significant role in Fascist governments.

Full-fledged fascist governments come into power by arresting masses of real or imagined enemies. The first act of the Hitler regime in Germany was to arrest large numbers of political opponents, union leaders, religious leaders who seemed to be hostile to the new government. The Nazis made it very clear that opponents would end up in concentration camps indefinitely.

That is not yet happening in the United States. But the NDAA and the Stellar Wind Program of the NSA may be interpreted as preparations for just such mass arrests.

It certainly appears that there are groups in the US – some of them powerful, some of them influential in the intelligence services, some of them influential in Congress, who would not hesitate to introduce a fascist authoritarian regimes in our country. The passage in Congress of the National Defense Authorization Act indicates the willingness in the highest places – even in Obama's White House – to ignore the Bill of Rights. The program to spy on citizens similarly ignores constitutional guarantees and threatens civil liberties.

America is not yet fascist but a lot of Americans are flirting with fascism.

Before you go to sleep tonight, look under your bed for a fascist or for one of their microphones. They may be recording your snores. Be sure your snores are loyal and patriotic.

 

The roots of fascism

In a previous blog I pointed out a range of thoroughly fascist attacks on Hispanics, on blacks, and on immigrants. The parallels to German fascism of the 1930s and 40s are overwhelming. Those parallels may help us understand what is happening in the United States today.

In the 1930s Germans suffered, as did Americans, from the world wide depression that began in 1929. In addition, the Germans had been defeated in World War I. In 1914 Germans from the right and the left could not wait to sign up to fight for the Kaiser. My father and three Jewish uncles, signed up. Four years later the national dream was in shambles and Germany was defeated.

But very soon, Germans began to say: don't blame us. Someone invented what has become known as the “stab in the back” legend. It hinted darkly at the betrayal of the German military by political forces which were never clearly identified. In typical, paranoid fashion the story was that forces, not further identified, had betrayed the German people and their victorious military by suing for peace in 1918.

The German people did not blame their leaders. The Kaiser fled to Holland where he lived out a long life in a small castle. No one demanded his extradition and punishment. Field Marshall Hindenburg, one of the commanders of the German Army during World War I, was elected president of the German Republic. Instead the Germans turned on the Jews, homosexuals, and gypsies, and began killing the inmates of mental institutions.

This sorry history suggests one of the sources of fascism: a failure to blame the guilty parties for military defeat and, instead, seeking scapegoats. This unjustified exoneration of the leaders of World War I is, of course, at the same time an exoneration of the German people itself. They had trusted in their leaders; they were eager to fight for them. They could not have blamed the Kaiser or Hindenburg without confessing their own foolishness in trusting these leaders. They had approved of the war. They entered it enthusiastically. Now they wanted to forget that and so they blamed the Jews and others.

All this is a long time ago and would not be worth talking about, if the same thing were not happening in the US today. Ever since World War II we have been losing wars – Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Some people keep posting stories on the Internet that our soldiers in Korea and in Vietnam were hurt by the rules of engagement. They were fighting “with one hand tied behind their back.” In the local newspaper letter column the same story begins to appear about the Iraq war: we could have won had the diplomats not prevented the military from waging a non-holds-barred fight.

In none of these cases have Americans blamed the leaders that got us into those wars. We enthusiastically elected John F. Kennedy and ignored the saber rattling and Cold War rhetoric of his inaugural speech in 1960. We elected Lyndon Johnson. Henry Kissinger one of the chief architects of the Vietnam war is still around and remains a respected celebrity. His responsibility for the debacle of Vietnam is not often mentioned. When George Bush stole the election in 2000, no one went out into the streets as Russians are doing today over a doubtful parliamentary election. Bush was reelected in 2004 (although not without some serious questions). He had widespread support among the people. No one has mentioned the possibility of blaming him or VP Cheney, or Rumsfeld, or Wolfowitz or any of that gang of super brains who got us into the Iraq war.

The reason for this reluctance is clear: if we blame our leaders we have to blame ourselves for electing or at least accepting them. The ordinary citizen who supports his or her government in time of war has to bear some responsibility if the war is lost. Americans, like the Germans in the last century, do not want to take responsibility for the terrible damage we have done to other people and to ourselves in a series of failed military adventures.

It is much more comfortable to persecute people of color, to try to conceal their contribution to America and to American culture, to make their life as miserable as possible, to try to prevent them from exercising their citizenship rights.

Speaking of poor people who get some help from the government, Rush Limbaugh, a prophet of the far right, said that he too had been poor and had been fired from jobs: “But I didn't blame anyone else for my problems. I knew that if I didn't try to solve them on my own or with the help of friends or family members, no one else was going to take care of me." Taking responsibility for oneself is thoroughly American.

Except when it comes to taking responsibility for military defeats, for failure and misery. Then we turn to fascism, and look for scapegoats among the people who bear a disproportionate burden of living in the United States.

What is happening to us?

America is in the midst of a major crisis that most people are not aware of.

Wisconsin is just about to abolish the collective bargaining rights for state workers, including teachers and many others. Other states are close to doing the same thing. Rights that for a century or more workers have fought for are suddenly being taken away.

Several states have moved to severely limit the rights of women to safe abortions. (See my earlier blog on that.)

The University of Nevada is in the forefront of moves considered by various colleges and universities of abolishing their philosophy departments. (An earlier attempt by Howard University to do this was scrapped in the face of vigorous protest. Mexican philosophers have been involved in the same fight for several years.) The courses designed most directly to encourage critical thinking among young people, who are just at the beginning of their careers and their lives as citizens, are now being taken away. Critical thinking is not highly regarded by those who wield power today.

Congress is trying to defund National Public radio because it represents a liberal point of view. No one even pretends that the motivation is to save money. This is an open campaign to suppress a particular kind of political opinion, to control what news and interpretations the public gets to hear. It is a clear case of thought control.

Congress is holding hearings on Muslim support for terrorism. No one is saying anything about white terrorists whose attacks are mounting in number. The shooting in Arizona of Representative Giffords is just one example of that. There exists a rising hysteria that has, in fact, little to do with terrorism and everything to do with racial prejudice against Muslim Americans. Racial hysteria is also an element in the anti-immigrant campaign.

The campaign to increase the misery of the poor, the sick, and the elderly continues apace.

You may say that all this is being done by the Republicans but those Republicans were elected. Most of these representatives are in the pocket of big business, business lobbies, people with money. But when it comes to pushing an agenda that is anti-intellectual, anti-liberal, anti-women, anti-Muslim and against the poor, the sick and the elderly, they respond to the emotions of their constituents. This is an easy way for them to appear to represent those who voted for them when, in effect, they mostly represent those who bought them.

How can we understand that campaign against established freedoms, against our traditional dedication to tolerance, against well-trained minds able to think for themselves, against different political views, against those who have the least power in our society?

Clearly the health care reform bill has something to do with all of that. People feel oppressed by the government. Although we live – we say – in a democracy, most people feel that they have nothing to say. Congressional seats are for sale, political influence goes to the highest bidder. Everyone can see that greed is rewarded, dishonesty helps you gain power, and consistent hypocrisy gains you an audience.

Battered by the economy, oppressed by employers and bureaucrats, deprived of power by the rich and famous, sold out by their elected representatives, most citizens are fearful and angry. And when people are fearful and angry they go looking for someone to vent their anger on. At such times people are willing to lash out, to blame others for their misery – usually not the guilty parties.

This was the mood in Germany in 1933 when Germans were willing to allow Adolf Hitler to try his hand at saving the nation. When Hitler went after a free press, against labor unions, when he began to persecute Jews, when he prescribed women's lives, most people said not to worry. Twelve years later Germany was in ruins.

Our traditions of freedom and democracy are stronger than they were in Germany. But the same mood of being victimized, of wanting to hurt somebody prevails in the US today. The same ugly mood that led Germans into fascism, dominates our politics today. Public speech is filled with hate and everyone has their own favorite target: the unions, Muslims, people with an education, political liberals, women, the poor, the sick, and the elderly.

Our troubles are very very serious. Can we put a stop to all this hate and destruction before it is too late?