So comparisons between the Bush administration and fascism are nothing new, to this site or anywhere else. I think there's room to make such comparisons. But there's also the risk of oversimplifying matters, or hyperbolizing them. With all due respect, let's get one thing straight:
The Bush administration is not a fascism, at least in the way that we usually think about it. There's a big difference between Mussolini's Italy or Hitler's
Germany and today's US of A. There's no squad violence, there's no over suppression of free speech, no death camps. No, these aren't the only characteristics of fascism. But niether are those "14 characteristics" I see floating around the net. If we are going to compare the Bush regime to fascism, then we have to avoid the sloppy hyperboles. Authoritarianism is not necessarily fascism, and every instance of totalitarianism or suppression is not evidence of a fascist government.
That said, I think there are better ways to think about the Bush administration, neo con thought, and the re-emergence of a fascist cultural movement.
read on if you think this is interesting
We can start by redefining what fascism was (is). Most theorists agree that fascism isn't just a government or a regime. More broadly, it is a cultural movement--a particular, widespread response to certain cultural threats that became prominent during the early 20th century.
Back there during the 19th century and early 20th century, people started getting really pissy about the emergence of industrial modernity. The newly formed masses along with their popular culture threatened the older, elitist cultural hierarchy with "mass society"--a capitalist society built around the needs and reproduction of the masses. Mass culture, mass art, mass tastes, mass institutions--all of it makes the cultural and economic elites sick. Its the state of "anarchy" that matthew arnold wrote so much about.
Fascism represents the most extreme reaction to this cultural threat. What Italy, Germany, and Spain have in common is an answer to the mass society question. Lowly and worthless as they may be, the masses, to fascists, could be redeemed if they became part of a larger vison of the state's identity. Yes, an beautiful nationalist ideal could redeem the clay-like masses as functionaries of some higher cause.
In this way, fascism is distinctly anti-modern: it resists the social changes ushered in by industrialization, etc.
At the same time, fascism wants a lot of the goodies associated with this modernity: tanks, corporate state, the factory, the school, mass media, etc.
We could also make a bigger mess by noting that fascism, even though it originally offered itself as a "third way" between communism and capitalism, never actually had a well-developed philosophical underpinning.
So how are these things reconciled? Well, the same way that fascism solved the problem of the masses: a propaganda driven, supreme aesthetic vision for the nation.
Sound familiar? You bet it does. As has been mentioned on this site (and please remind me of the exact reference), a significant shift has occurred within American conservatism. From the small government, leave-me-alone and mind-your-own business mentality of previous generations, contemporary conservatism focuses on big nation (not big government), big patriotism, and big war. Bush and friends want to spread freedom around the world like liberating flames. The politics of neoconservatism are a politics of global Americanization. And they are also a politics of fascist culture.
Because behind every speech that welcomes the arrival of freedom, behind all the talk of the homeland, and embedded in the way we think about the enemy and other cultures, is the desire to stabilize a set of idealized American cultural norms. Keep America safe so it can keep on being America. Eliminate the friction of cultural difference that characterizes our age of global intedependency by spreading fredom. There's some ambivalence here. We want the benefits of being a world power. Our capitalism thrives on the breakdown of the nation state as a global political actor. Nonetheless, the culture of the Bush adminstration wants to deal with the threat of a global mass society that threatens our established norms of American identity.
This is the re-emergence of a fascist cultural movement. The aestheticized, glorified vision of "freedom" and "democracy," largely devoid of political or philosphical underpinnings (especially as they are applied in their new contexts), help us to recast the ordinarily useless global masses as noble subsidiaries of our larger National project. It also provides ideological cover for our tactical economic manipulation of the very breakdown of these national agents.
In short, where fascism was ambivalently anti-modern, Bush administered culture is ambivalently anti-postmodern. The same instincts toward order and hierarchy are there, and so are the tools of aestheticized politics and aestheticized nationalism. And so there will be (are) also the the elimination of opposing political viewpoints, etc. etc. etc.
So Bush is not a Hitler. And we need to go beyond a 14 point checklist to understand exactly what's going on here. The Bush adminstration, in response to parallel cultural threats, marks the reemergence of a fascist cultural movement in the United States. And no, this doesn't mean we shouldn't be concerned. In fact, these more deeply rooted currents of social thought make me more terrified than ever. Will there be an election in 2008? Or will the teflon presidency find a way around that problem too?
Thanks for reading this far. I'll be posting more specific analysis of Bush Administered Culture's ideals of violence and war, among other things. For now, let me know what you think of these here idears. If you think this is worth talking about more, then please ask questions or contribute.