who blogs at Dirigo Blue and Kennebec Blues
Calling the President a fascist appears to be mostly done
by those with fascist tendencies.
In a comment Friday on Maine's Dirigo Blue Blog we were treated to a twisting charge that one hears more frequently from the far right that implies that President Barack Obama is essentially a Nazi:
…how ever [sic] the Nazi's evolved into something truly reprehensible, they were socialists. Just for clarity, socialism is a politico-economic philosophy that believes government must direct all major economic decisions by command, and thus all the means of production for the greater good, however defined. This is Obama. Through out [sic] the years, the left has done an outstanding job of twisting history, but Hitler WAS a socialist. May I quote from Chapter 12 of Mein Kampf:
The National Socialist Movement, which aims at establishing the National Socialist People's State, must always bear steadfastly in mind the principle that every future institution under that State must be rooted in the movement itself.
With the vast expansion of our federal government and Obama's (and your) desire for more control, the comparison is quite accurate. No one is claiming Obama is SS, but clearly there is an accurate comparison between the National Socialist Party and Obama.
Because of a word, “socialism” contained in Nazi party vernacular, we have hyper active right wing minds working overtime to add to their redefinitions of history and facts such fabrications as FDR’s economic policy was a failure and climate change is not connected with man-made fossil fuel burning. Their convoluted illogic goes like this: I don’t like Obama; I don’t like health-care reform; health care reform is a social program; social programs must be socialist programs, I don’t like socialists; socialism is part of the name of the 1930’s Nazi party - National Socialism, Nazis were fascists; thus I can call President Obama both a socialist and a fascist and draw a Hitler mustache on Obama on my next tea party poster.
This redefinition of fascist may have another aim too. On behalf of the far right, it attempts to combine right wing fascist extremism politics with further to left (But I’m just not going to call socialists extreme.) political theory to inoculate the right wing in this country against the countercharge of fascism as they deride the President as a socialist and to a lesser degree with being a communist which would be a more extreme charge that however really does not work at all.
Laurence W. Britt wrote a very concise piece in Free Inquiry magazine entitled “Fascism Anyone?” that very accurately distills fourteen key threads, which are expounded on in the article, that run through fascist or proto-fascist regimes:
1. Powerful and continuing expressions of nationalism.
2. Disdain for the importance of human rights.
3. Identification of enemies/scapegoats as a unifying cause.
4. The supremacy of the military/avid militarism.
5. Rampant sexism.
6. A controlled mass media.
7. Obsession with national security.
8. Religion and ruling elite tied together.
9. Power of corporations protected.
10. Power of labor suppressed or eliminated.
11. Disdain and suppression of intellectuals and the arts.
12. Obsession with crime and punishment.
13. Rampant cronyism and corruption.
14. Fraudulent elections.
Now consider for the sake of accuracy what we see today within right wing politics in the United States:
1. Nationalism disguised in patriotic trappings is on the rise.
2. Human rights are seen as limited.
3. Immigrants are scapegoated.
4. The military is placed upon a pedestal.
5. Women’s rights remain secondary
6. Credence is given to powerfully biased FOX as being an accurate news source.
7. National security is given acquiescence over individual liberties.
8. Fundamentalist Christians are striving to blur church and state constitutional distinctions.
9. Corporations are considered citizens.
10. Labor unions are demonized.
11. Intellectuals and artists are mocked.
12. Harsh punishments for crimes by blacks and the poor are promoted.
13. The intertwining of corporate and political speech and deals are ignored.
14. Attempts to suppress voter turnout are being undertaken.
Perhaps it is because several combinations of the above indicators expose the march of fascist tendency in several Republican Presidential campaigns, on right wing talk radio, within the tea party, and increasingly from more dogmatic leaders within the GOP that this “pot calling the kettle black” preemptive attempt to deflect fascism away from its natural home on the right is undertaken.