And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
WB Yeats
The US is not yet a bona fide fascist state in the traditional sense, but the current obsession with national security, militaristic rhetoric and imperial ambitions tend in that direction. Other traits of Bush’s government fit the bill as well: hyper-nationalism, identification of evil-doing enemies (Islamofascists), authoritarian leadership and the concentration of power in the executive branch of government (via signing statements among other scams), emphasis on machismo ("bring em on"), rollback of personal freedoms, protection of corporate power, cronyism ("heck of a job Brownie"), slick marketing and control of the media, and framing day-to-day life as permanent war.
The rise in fascism in America has gone largely unrecognized because it has been slickly marketed and is largely out of sight. Unlike European fascism of the 20th century--all menace and snarl-- the fascism of 20th century America is soft focus, a veritable Hallmark card. It is a fascism that does not announce itself. It is not high costume: no jackboots, no black leather, no swastikas. American style fascism usually has good manners, operates behind the scenes, and prefers not to be in your face.
Bush claims that much of this is necessary because "The world changed on September the 11th." But the reality is that Bush had an aggressive foreign policy in the wings before the terrorists struck just as Hitler had a fascistic agenda waiting when the Reichstag Fire provided the occasion to implement Naziism. The Bush team like Hitler before him was bent on one thing: grabbing power.
The genius of Bush’s alarmist vision is that it’s impossible to know how vulnerable we are. Is another 9/11 in the works? Perception is primary. Who do you believe? The Bush team markets fear, the long war. It encourages the citizenry to trust the unitary executive who alone has access to top secret information. Cowed Democrats go along.
It is said by the Neocons that the historical analogy of our age is to 1938, the time of the Munich Conference, a time when the Allies could have faced up to the Nazi menace but did not. Now we are told a new Hitler, the madman Ahmadinajad, plans the second holocaust and the establishment of a world-wide caliphate. And just as in 1938 the world sleeps. Neoconservative scare mongers like Norman Podhoretz tell us that we are already in the midst of World War IV but don’t recognize it. (If you missed World War III so did I).
Perhaps a better historical analogy is to the day after the Reichstag Fire in 1933 when President of Germany Paul von Hindenburg, acting on Hitler’s request, issued the Reichstag Fire Degree that suspended most human rights provided for by the Constitution of the Weimar Republic. Just as the liberal elites of Weimar Germany acceded to Hitler so too do the liberal Democratic elites succumb to the admonitions of the unitary executive. Glenn Greenwald observed in his blog of October 10 that liberals and Democrats, seduced by authoritarian preachments, go along with warrantless eavesdropping and other abridgements of civil liberties.
In the Beltway culture, granting more power to the Government -- particularly when that power is justified by The Terrorists -- is always a Serious, Inherently Good measure, because that power will be exercised by the Good, Serious Adults Whom are Trusted, the Admiral Mike McConnells and the Gen. Michael Haydens and soon-to-be Trusted and Responsible Michael Mukasey. These are Good Men, seeking to Protect Us, and there is no reason to deny them the power they demand in order to keep us safe. That's how even Beltway "liberals" like Joe Klein (of Time Magazine) and David Ignatius (of the Washington Post) show that they are Serious and Trustworthy members of the Beltway elite: by paying proper homage to the Goodness of high governmental officials who are trying to Keep Us Safe. ...our Leaders need more power because they want to protect us. The very notion that such power should not be vested without oversight and safeguards is, to them, considered unserious, because we are talking here about officials who are good and responsible and would never abuse their power. That is why Congress in August all but gutted the Fourth Amendment and vested the Bush administration with the power of warrantless eavesdropping with barely a peep of protest from our Beltway elite. To the contrary, when they speak about it at all, they do so by warning Democrats not to impede these "important" protections.
In a fascist state, and in the proto-fascist state that America has become, special interests, including corporations and special issue constituencies, put the government leaders into power. In return they receive a beneficial business/government relationship and become members of the power elite. Favored corporations like Halliburton, Bechtel and others (in Nazi Germany it was IG Farben, etc) receive sweetheart, no bid contracts. Policy decisions are outsourced to these corporations and constituencies. Big oil runs energy. The Israeli lobby runs Middle East policy. Polls show that Americans do not want to take sides in the Israel/Palestine dispute and do not want to go to war with Iran. A recent poll of Democrats shows that the majority of Democrats do not even want to provide Israel with foreign aide. But America’s Middle East policy is almost the exact opposite of what Americans want. The Israeli lobby has perfected soft fascism by surpressing dissent via pre-emptive censorship. In the last couple of years it has arranged to:
--Cancel a talk on the Israeli lobby by Tony Judt in New York City
--Cancel Chicago appearance of Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs
--Cancel a speech by Nobel laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu at St Thomas University in Minneapolis
--Postpone New York performance of the acclaimed play My Name is Rachel Corrie at the New York Theater Workshop
--Cancel a concert by Marcel Khalife at the Joan Kroc Theater in San Diego
--Surpress the publication of Walt and Mearsheimer’s manuscript by an American publisher
As is well known the Israeli lobby resorts to hard ball intimidation and smearing tactics when soft fascistic approaches fail. The smearing and vilification of Jimmy Carter, Desmond Tutu, Walt, Mearsheimer, and others is the price one pays for deviating from the approved policy line.
The big question now is where is America going. Are the proto-fascistic trends in place now going to continue? Will a Democratic president restore our nation’s civic sanity? It is hard to tell. Hillary Clinton is in bed with AIPAC, threatens war with Iran, and is as sanctimonious as Bush. Edwards and Obama seem saner. But so called Liberal Democrats like Pelosi, dingy Harry Reid, and Steny Hoyer seem flaccid characters unlikely to stem the tide or change course. Are forces now unleashed in the republic and in the world that no politician can withstand? Has America’s recent history of murderous militarism so offended the world, especially the Islamic world, that a cycle of violence is inevitable?