The recent fusion of state and financial interests that culminated in the federal bailout of Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae and AIG will eventually cost taxpayers over a trillion dollars. While some may see the financial slowdown as evidence of the decline of the American Empire, others view recent developments in the giant government bailout as steps toward fascism.
While comparisons between the current times and the 1930s are being made regularly by pundits and politicians, the likeness could be even more troubling than the apparently unsettling economic similarities. Although seen as a turn to the left by free-market adherents, the government bailout of huge financial institutions, or the nationalization of risk and loss, and taxpayer subsidization of Wall Street profits more close resemble classical fascism. Under a fascist government the modes of production are privately owned while controlled by the state. This system generates big profits for the wealthy, regulatory agencies with vested interest in the system that they pretend to regulate, and a government dedicated to social control and maximizing profits for their partners in the business world. This Iron Triangle smothers the citizenry, it's impervious to market forces because it's shielded by federal bailouts and state control. It maintains the status quo through campaigns of propaganda and terror, de-politicizing voters through structural violence, criminalization, religious brain-washing, misogyny, over-medication, substandard education, surveillance, material insecurity and social upheaval .
Where this gets funny (in a "holy shit I can't believe we just let them fuck us like that -- we are actually more retarded than all those 'good' Germans who watched the cattle cars rumble by" kind of way) is that the Bush family has been trying to turn this into a fascist country for decades. Huffpo is reporting that the BBC Newswent to all the trouble to dig up PUBLIC RECORDS (oh to have a fourth estate) that showed unequivocally that Prescott Bush was part of a conspiracy of Wall Street businessmen and Nazi sympathizers who tried to removed FDR from power in order to implement a fascist regime. Larisa Alexandrovna, another reporter from the Huffington Post, goes further and connects earlier attempts by Prescott Bush to manifest American fascism to his grandson's current administration. George W. Bush and his administration not only oversaw dramatic redistribution of wealth from the poor to the wealthy, manipulated election results and the growth of the war machine,but also gutted and corrupted regulatory agencies and incubated this absudly, fantastically, unimaginably expensive financial crisis.
Citizen-comrades, we must resist this turn towards fascism. We must invoke our privileges as Americans, defeat the elitist warmongers the right, and take our nation out of the hands of the Bush family and their ilk Our votes in November are critical weapons against this fascist coup d'etat. Together we can get out from under the boots in our backs, rise up, and turn the tide with our political power. We will not be lulled to sleep by the sound of the cattle cars rumbling through our neighborhoods - we will fight. We will elect Barak Obama and thwart these efforts of the political, economic and social elites to further consolidate their power and capital at the expense of the American people and the world.