Fascism ?
A lesson in contemporary history by Strider 2/11/2003
The current American war preparations and propaganda
have recently brought before an outraged, but bewildered public
a set of new issues and concerns which we have seldom, if ever, before confronted
in this constitutional democratic society. Due to a pervasive policy of rote thinking, public mythologies, and the extreme individualism and “get-ahead” imperatives and rewards inherent in the policies of all American school systems, and, of course, the economic system We are unarmed, intellectually, morally, & socially, and organizationally, to deal with the machinations of our rulers.
American students and citizens probably knows less about their own history
than the citizens of any other country with a public, and ”free,” education system.
* Within the space of a letter, I can only present an outline, with which many will certainly disagree. That is fine. Do so. The proofs will come as current policies unfold, and continue, tragically, to re-define our entire society. You may draw your own conclusions. What I offer here is a view of the social patterns of recent history.
Those among us who are older will have some knowledge of that to which I refer.
Persons from Europe can not so easily forget Hitler, as we have. *
When the working class falls under assault by its government and economic powers, its natural tendency is to mobilize either toward socialism, toward syndicalist communalism, or toward greater democracy. When the middle class faces a corresponding assault upon their rights, freedoms, and standard of living the members tend historically, to go fascist. Most of us recall the Reaganesque assault upon the political standing, rights, and organizational freedom of the working class in the 1980s. This could not have been accomplished but for the tremendous export of capital and jobs attendant upon the first phase of the current drive for Globalization of “free” trade.
The next phase began in full force in 1997, with the Asian economic crisis, and the financial and political measures employed thereafter to “shore up” the System.
With American workers already effectively dis-empowered, phase 2 now entails the “belt-tightening” assault upon the traditional rights, freedoms, and standards of the far more atomized middle class. It is not at all irrelevant to consider the case of Germany in the 1920s, the most highly educated and industrialized nation of that time. In its formal structure the Weimar Republic was also the most democratic country of that era.
When a corporate oligarchy uses racist, nationalist, religious and other dehumanizing techniques, and both the threat and the fact of mass terror either employed by itself, or charged to this demonized Other; when it employs blatantly and provably false propaganda, and the suppression of constitutional protections and basic citizen rights & freedoms toward the advancement of policies and launching of structures pre-determined by, and for, that oligarchy, this is the core structure of Fascism.
Military aggression, generally against some vulnerable demonized population, in national “defense” against some presumed threat from that target, to martial the mal-educated and emotionally reflexive sector of the population, and to suppress intelligent thought, basic humanity, and democratic participation, is ALWAYS part and parcel of this fascization process. Even in the most broadly based democracies, there is always some danger of such racist demagoguery.
President Eisenhower tried to warn us of the takeover of our country by the Military Industrial Complex, which he named, with its attendant destruction of our democratic society. He got us OUT of the Korean War. It is time we listen to Ike.
Constitutional protections civil liberties, basic human rights, and democratic participation are our only structural protections against such a threat of enslavement.
These have generally served us well in America, even under great duress. During the Great Depression we were saved from such takeover of our society precisely by the general expansion of democratic rights, rather than their curtailment This is not the policy of the current Regime.
The Patriot Act, and the secret currently proposed Patriot Act II, entitled the Domestic Security Enhancement Act, which is to be rammed through Congress under cover of the coming War so that the flag-waving and fear of retaliation will suppress serious discussion of its provisions, are designed precisely to abrogate our basic American Constitutional rights. Among its provisions are measures to strip Americans of their citizenship if they are deemed by some agency, viz. the FBI, to have contributed to, or participated in some activity which that agency, considers a threat to American security. These measures are to be retroactive. Judicial review is to be dispensed with. Secret arrests are empowered, and it is to be a criminal offense to inform a friend or spouse that he or she is being investigated. When these Acts become fully operational, very soon, we will no longer live in the society in which we have grown up and have always believed in, even as we may have previously employed these very mechanisms to criticize vehemently many of its policies. Such freedoms may soon no longer exist.
Let us recall the words of President Ronald Reagan, “I stand for the UN-amended Constitution.” Most people thought he just meant that he was advocating race slavery which was abolished by the 13th Amendment. It is much worse than that.
Unamended means precisely NO BILL OF RIGHTS. No freedom of person, religion, press, assembly, or association. Reagan expressed explicit disloyalty to his sworn oath to uphold and defend the existing Constitution. Twenty years ago people thought it
to be funny. It is NOT funny. The laws are right now being put in place. When Secretary Rumsfeld and Vice President Cheney call for “Full spectrum dominance,” over the world, this is no joke. What is meant by that phrase, precisely, is the elimination of International Law which might apply to the United States, and the elimination of the United Nations as a viable democratic world body.
We in America, and therefore the entire world, are in mid-process of such a concerted threat to the democratic institutions which constitute our society
as occurred in Europe 3 or 4 generations past. In France, Germany, and Russia
they have not forgotten. Those three countries along with Poland,
suffered more than 40,000,000 dead.
Today, as then, the demanding appeal to national power, accompanied by strident, even screaming invocation of the very principles & ideals which they actively destroy,
are employed in concert, to line us up for war. We have little time left to wake up.
We Americans often accusingly act bewildered at, “How could the German people have allowed Hitler to hijack their country ?”
We wonder, “How must the German people have felt in August of 1939 ?”
Now we know. Strider Benston
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