|
Pulse of the Twin Cities Login |
|
If you do not have an account yet
Create One.
|
|
|
Twin Town High (vol. 8) |
|
|
|
|
The Resistible Rise of American Fascism
Wednesday 07 March @ 15:49:14 |
 by ED FELIEN
"When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the American flag."–Huey Long
Jon Stewart, on The Daily Show, warns that when two people argue, the first one to call the other a Nazi loses the argument. Keeping that caution in mind, it still might be useful to measure our current political condition against the political and economic realities of Nazism and fascism in the early twentieth century.
History of Nazism and fascism
 What are Nazism and fascism? Mussolini, the first fascist theorist, said, "Corporati il Stati," that is, the corporation is the state. He thought a better word would have been Corporatism, rather than fascism. The experience of fascism in Italy and Nazism in Germany showed close collaboration between the major industrialists and the fascist and Nazi political parties.
No one really won the First World War, but it is clear that feudalism lost. Before the War, royalty ruled every European and Eastern European country. After the War, parliamentary democracies were generally socialist or social democratic. The newly emerging international capitalist class panicked. Through the elaborate machinations of the "Western Powers," democratically elected governments were overthrown in all of Eastern Europe and, by 1923, they had all become right-wing military dictatorships. The West (including the U. S.) established a Cordon Sanitaire around Russia to contain the plague of Communism, and 21 nations actually invaded Russia on four fronts. The invasion faltered and failed, but virulent anti-Communism became the enduring legacy of the 20th century.
It is in this context that Mussolini and his Fascist Party Black Shirts marched into Rome in 1922, and the next year Hitler staged an abortive Beer Hall Putsch in Munich. By 1936, there were fascist parties active in all of Europe, and they would be active collaborators when Hitler invaded their countries. When Franco began his attempt to overthrow the democratically elected government of Republican Spain, he was joined by Roman legions from Mussolini and air support from the Luftwaffe courtesy of Hitler, culminating a year later in the bombing and total devastation of the Basque city of Guernica.
Although the America First Committee didn't formally organize until 1940, there was general consensus among American capitalists that American should stay out of the Spanish Civil War. John T. Bernard from Minnesota was the only member of Congress to vote against the Spanish Embargo. He was the only one to understand that anti-Communism was driving the U.S. into a pro-fascist position.
The U. S. and their allies didn't engage the German army in Europe until June of 1944, even though Russia was an ally in World War II. Most U.S. capitalists thought it was just fine that Nazis and Communists should kill each other. It was when it looked like Russia was going to win the war all by itself and dominate Western Europe that the Allies began war preparations in earnest.
Hallmarks of fascism
Fascism began as a capitalist reaction to Communism in Russia and to socialist trade unions becoming increasingly politically effective. Fascists linked up with extreme conservative elements to repress the trade unions. Hitler believed industrialists should be "masters in their own house." In "Mein Kampf," he says, "We must teach the Marxists that the future master of the streets is National Socialism, just as it will some day be the master of the state." Violence, brute force and murder were the weapons of the Brown Shirts in dealing with union leaders and socialists.
Hitler defined himself as the personification of the state. Anyone who attacked or criticized Hitler was attacking the state, and therefore, any and all means were valid in defending the state.
There was a general suspension of civil liberties. The right of habeas corpus--that is, the right to know the charges brought against you and to have a hearing on those charges and to be represented by counsel in those hearings--was a right acknowledged by St. Paul's Roman captors. This right is suspended by fascist governments because the state is under attack. People are thrown into prison without knowing the charges brought against them and without a fair trial to refute those charges.
Freedom of speech is curtailed. People do not talk to their neighbors for fear of being reported as an enemy of the state. Public meetings are monitored and private conversations on the telephone are recorded. The government boasts of its power to do this, and that has a chilling effect on freedom of speech.
Freedom of association is curtailed. If you are friends with a person who is possibly an enemy of the state, then it is assumed you are an enemy of the state.
The freedom to peacefully assemble to petition the government for redress of grievances is limited, the government says, to prevent anarchy and chaos.
All of these hallmarks of Nazi Germany are now hallmarks of political life in America.
The success of the Nazis could not have been possible without a compliant press. The newspapers did not want to offend Hitler or seem unpatriotic, so no one questioned the government. In the U.S., the major media never questioned Bush's stated reasons for going to war in Iraq, and even today the press refuses to look beyond the propaganda handouts of the State Department. When Saddam Hussein was executed, the lead article in the New York Times said the U.S. was the best friend Saddam Hussein had at the end.
This was after the U.S. had captured him, set up a prison, then a court, then a series of judges, flew him to a place of execution on a U.S. base and ensured that his executioners would torment him in his final moments. If the New York Times can accept an obvious State Department spin and report it as news, then, sadly, the government is in full control of the media.
Newspaper publishers naturally tend to reaffirm the status quo because they don't want to alienate their advertisers. This leads to an almost unconscious prior restraint on the part of newspaper editors. The larger the news corporation, the greater the pressure on writers and editors to conform to a corporate model. As newspaper conglomerates become larger, and as more newsrooms get stripped of staff to make way for even larger profits, there will be even less likelihood a managing editor will look beyond government handouts for a critical analysis of world events.
Nazi Germany used "the other" as a unifying national identity. Hitler effectively portrayed Germany as the victim of both a European conspiracy to bankrupt the country by the Treaty of Versailles and the greed of an international Jewish conspiracy. World conquest and genocide became for the German people the logical engines of social justice. Likewise, in America, there are fascist elements within the police and the military that have already lumped all Muslims into "the other."
Lt. Bob Kroll, of the Minneapolis Police, according to other officers present, said, "We're at war with Islamics, and these idiots [referring to the citizens of Minneapolis] elect one [referring to Keith Ellison] to Congress." Kroll represents the perfect fascist response. He is able to process a response without thinking. It is almost instinctual. Hitler appreciated this. In "Mein Kampf," he says, "If two bodies of troops battle each other, the one to conquer will not be the one in which every individual has received the highest strategic training, but that one which has the most superior leadership and at the same time the most disciplined, blindly obedient, best drilled troop." In the new (American) definition of "the other," Arabs and "Islamics" are the new Semites, and Jews are our friends. It's still anti-Semitic, but it's been updated.
Terror is a useful instrument of the fascist state. In his movie, Borat tells a rodeo audience, "We support your war of terror." The crowd cheers. Did they hear him right? Do they understand that it is their government that is waging a war of terror against them? Is it possible that all these orange alerts and security checks are just manipulative tools to control, to ensure obedience and to stifle dissent?
Fascism needs a total and perpetual war to unify the country and make dissent a treasonable offense. Bush got the Congress to declare a war on terror, not a war on a specific country, but a war on a concept. If it was a war on a country, the war could be waged and won and we'd be done with it. If it's a war on a concept it could go on forever.
Finally, to return to Mussolini's definition, a fascist state is a state in service to the corporation. Who is winning the war in Iraq? Certainly not the Iraqi or American people who have been bankrupted by this obscenity. Halliburton, with its multi-billion dollar no-bid contracts, with its control of oil equipment and leases, with its largest private army in history, is the clear winner. Who owns Halliburton? Since the 1930s the Bush family owned and controlled Dresser Industries. When Cheney was CEO of Halliburton he had the company buy Dresser Industries for $8 billion. Wall Street thought that was too steep a price and the value of Halliburton stock dropped by a third. Halliburton was only worth about $8 billion before the sale, so it has to be assumed that the principals of Dresser actually took control of Halliburton. George W. Bush, as the oldest son, is probably the director of the Bush family fortune, so he is probably the principal director of Halliburton, which is convenient because he's also President of the United States and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Services. ||
|
|
 |
|
|
Comments -
Post Comment |
|
The comments are owned by the poster. We are not responsible for its content.
NO comments yet! Be the first!
|
|
|
