Is America Becoming Fascist?
by Anis Shivani

Since mainstream media refuse to seriously ask this question, the analysis of where we are leading and what has gone wrong has been mostly off-base. Investigation of the kinds of underhanded, criminal tactics fascist regimes undertake to legitimize their agenda and accelerate the rate of change in their favor is dismissed as indulging in "conspiracy theory." If the f-word is uttered, observers are quick to note the obvious dissimilarities with previous variants of Fascism. American writers dare not speak the truth.

The blinkered assertion that we are immune to the fascist virus ignores degrees of convergence and distinction based on the individual patient's history. The New York Times and other liberal voices have been obsessed in recent years with the rise of minority fascist parties in the Netherlands, France and other European countries. They have questioned the tastefulness of new books and films about Hitler, and again demonized the icons of Nazism. Max Frankel, former editor of the Times, quotes from biographer Joachim Fest in his review of Speer: The Final Verdict: "how easily, given appropriate conditions, people will allow themselves to be mobilized into violence, abandoning the humanitarian traditions they have built up over centuries to protect themselves from each other." Is Frankel hinting at his anxiety about the primal being that has arisen in America? The pace of events in the last two years has been almost as blindingly fast as it was after Hitler's consolidation of fascist power in 1933. Speed stuns and silences.

To pose the question doesn't mean that American fascism is a completed project; at any point, anything can happen to shift the course of history in a different direction. Yet after repeated and open corruption of the normal electoral process, several declarations of global war, adventurous and unprecedented military doctrines, selective suspension of the Bill of Rights and clear signals that a declaration of emergency is on the horizon, surely it is time to analyze the situation differently. Several of the apparent contradictions in the Bush administration's governance make perfect sense if the fascist prism is applied, but not with the usual perspective. Fascism is home, it is here to stay, and it better be countered with all the resources at our disposal.

American fascism taps into the perennial complaint against liberalism: that it fails to provide an authentic sense of belonging to the majority of people. America today wants to be communal and virile; it seeks to overcome what many have been convinced are the unreasonable demands of minorities and women; it wants to reinvigorate ideals of nation, region and race in order to take control of the future; it seeks to overcome the social divisiveness of capitalism and democracy, remolding the nation through propaganda and leadership.

We can notice obvious differences from the German or Italian nationalist traditions, of course - we have our own nationalist myths.

In the near future, America can be expected to embark on a more radical search to define who is and who is not a part of the natural order:

exclusion, deportation and eventually extermination might again become the order of things. Fascism can occur precisely at that moment of truth when the course of political history can tend to one direction or another. Nazism never had the support of the majority of Germans; at best about a third fully supported it. About a third of Americans today are certifiably fascist; another 20 percent or so can be swayed around to particular causes with smart propaganda. The basic paradigm remains more or less intact.

Capitalism today is different, so are the means of propaganda, and so are the technological tools of suppression. But that is only a matter of variation, not opposition. With all of Germany's cultural strength, brutality won out; the same analysis can apply to America. Hitler never won clear majorities (his ascent to power was facilitated by the political elites), and yet once he was in power, he crushed all dissent; consider the parallels to the fateful, hair-splitting election of 2000 and its aftermath. Hitler took advantage of the Reichstag fire - the burning of the German parliament, which was blamed on communist arson - to totally reshape German institutions and culture; think of 9/11 as a close parallel. Hitler was careful to give the impression of always operating under legal cover; note again the similarity of a pseudo-legal shield for the actions of the American fascists, who stretch the Geneva Conventions by redefining prisoners of war as "unlawful combatants." One can go on and on in this vein.

If we look at historian Stanley Payne's classical general theory of fascism, we are struck by the increasing similarities with the American model:

1. The Fascist Negations
   Anti-liberalism.
   Anti-communism.
   Anti-conservatism.
   
2. Ideology and Goals
   Creation of a new nationalist authoritarian state.
   Organization of a new kind of regulated, multi-class, integrated national economic structure.
   The goal of empire.
   Specific espousal of an idealist, voluntarist creed.
   
3. Style and Organization
   Emphasis on aesthetic structure, stressing romantic and mystical aspects.
   Attempted mass mobilization with militarization of political relationships and style, and the goal of a mass party militia.
   Positive evaluation and use of violence.
   Extreme stress on the masculine principle.
   Exaltation of youth.
   Specific tendency toward an authoritarian, charismatic, personal style of command.

With American fascism, the first two negations are obvious; the third may seem unlikely. But fascism is not conservatism, and it takes issue with conservatism's anti-revolutionary stance. Conservatism's libertarian strand - an American staple - would not agree with fascism's "nationalist authoritarian state." Reaganite anti-government rhetoric might have been a precursor to fascism, but free market and deregulationist ideology cannot be labeled fascist.

Continuing to look at Payne's list, we note that the goal of empire has found open acceptance over the last couple of years. Voluntarism has been elevated to iconic status, as AmeriCorps members are recruited and directed toward homeland-security measures. The mass party militia - especially large bands of organized, militarized youth - seems to be missing, but there is certainly no doubt about the glorification of violence. The masculine principle (think Donald "Rummy" Rumsfeld, or the president landing Top Gun-style on the deck of an aircraft carrier) has been elevated as the basis of policy-making. Command is authoritarian and personal. It is true that Bush is not as charismatic as Hitler, but one would have to ask if this is not a redundancy in a political model that raises the office of the presidency to an icon of celebrity.

It takes a bit more effort to notice American fascism's emphasis on aesthetic structure, stressing romantic and mystical aspects. As Hebrew University political scientist Zeev Sternhell has described it for Nazi Germany, fascism in the American synthesis is a cultural rebellion, a revolutionary ideology with totalitarianism at its very essence.

In only the last few months, America has advanced tremendously from emerging to realized fascism. Its imperialist and expansionist tendencies need to be couched less and less in idealist terms for mass acceptance. The idea of a cohesive "working class" has been dormant for more than a decade. Oppositional groups are often self-silencing - the meek Democratic Party is only the most obvious example - but most of the ruling establishment continues to practice a mild form of liberalism and hopes that if things get too out of hand it can mobilize public opinion against brutal suppression.

George Mosse, author of The Fascist Revolution, describes fascism as viewing itself in a permanent state of war, enlisting the masses as "foot soldiers of a civic religion." As Mosse points out, fascism seeks a higher form of democracy even as it rejects the customary forms of representative government. Government and corporate propaganda is pervasive in America; we need only to delineate its descent from the Nazi form. Mosse rejects the notion that fascism rules through terror; it is built, he says, upon a popular consensus. One must never underestimate the fertile ground American anti-intellectualism provides for more banal forms of propaganda and cultural terrorism. American media, entertainment and virtual technology have pioneered whole new methods of trivialization of "mass death" and elevation of brutality as a "great experience." The current American aesthetic appreciation of technology, and especially the technology of war, is also of a piece with Hitler's passions.

Even the puritanism of American fascism does not necessarily conflict with the Nazi emphasis on style and beauty. Nazism annexed "the pillars of respectability: hard work, self-discipline, and good manners," along with chastity and family values. The US certainly has its analogs to Max Nordau, whose rebellion against decadence in art and literature so inspired the Nazis. (Think of the demonization of photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, and the ongoing attacks on alleged artistic degeneracy.) We must be willing to consider expanded definitions of how romanticism has been incorporated by American fascism.

Liberals might complain that in America there hasn't been a declared revolution, a fascist transformation that asserts itself as such. But fascism has simply taken over the liberals' own platform, including its appeal to "tolerance and freedom." As Mosse says, "Tolerance ... was claimed by fascists in antithesis to their supposedly intolerant enemies, while freedom was placed within the community. To be tolerant meant not tolerating those who opposed fascism: individual liberty was possible only within the collectivity." Fascism is not a deviance from popular cultural trends, but only the taming of them within revived nationalist myths. Mosse holds that fascism didn't diverge from mainstream European culture; it absorbed most of what held great mass appeal. The same principles apply to American fascism.

Perhaps a final means of taking the measure of American fascism is through the writer and intellectual Umberto Eco and his 1995 essay "Ur-Fascism," which identifies 14 characteristics of "eternal fascism." Not all of them have to be present for a system to be considered fascist, and some may even be contradictory: Eco is astute enough to suggest a family of resemblance, overlap and kinship, and the analyst's task is to note which particular characteristics apply to a system and understand the reasons for the absence of others, rather than dismiss the fascist categorization if some features from a previous fascist variant do not apply. "There was only one Nazism, and we cannot describe the ultra-Catholic Falangism of Franco as Nazism," Eco says of the differences between fascist movements, adding, "Remove the imperialist dimension from Fascism, and you get Franco or Salazar; remove the colonialist dimension, and you get Balkan Fascism."

All 14 characteristics of Eco's matrix of ur-fascism apply to America to some degree, (1) the cult of tradition; (2) the rejection of modernism; (3) the cult of action for action's sake; (4) the idea that dissent is betrayal; (5) fear of difference, or racism; (6) the appeal to individual or social frustration; (7) obsession with conspiracies, along with xenophobia and nationalism; (8) the message that the enemy is at once too strong and too weak (note the media spin on Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein); (9) the idea that pacifism is collusion with the enemy, and that life is a permanent war; (10) scorn for the weak; (n) the cult of heroism; (12) machismo, or transferring the "will to power onto sexual questions"; (13) the belief that individual rights are subordinate to the unity of the state, and that fascism "has to oppose 'rotten' parliamentary governments"; and (14) ur-fascism uses a language of propaganda.

No doubt, fascism is a descriptor too carelessly thrown around. Perhaps a non-controversial statement may be that the fascist tendency always exists, at the very least latent and dormant. But when more and more of the latency becomes actualized, there comes a point when the nature of the problem has to be redefined. We may already have crossed that point. As Eco notes, "Ur-fascism can still return in the most innocent of guises. Our duty is to unmask it and to point the finger at each of its new forms - every day, in every part of the world.”

Anis Shivani <Anis_Shivani_ab92@post.harvard.edu> is at work on a novel about South Asians in New York during the boom years. This article was reprinted with the kind permission of the author and is © 2003 by Anis Shivani.