[Mb-civic] reflections on fascism

[ean at sbcglobal.net]

Fascism Where Big Corporations Have Become Our Government

"Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism 
because it is a merger of State and corporate power."
                          Benito Mussolini, Fascist dictator of Italy

                                  
                   - Fourteen Characteristics of 
                              Fascism -

1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism - Fascist regimes 
tend to make constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans, symbols, 
songs, and other paraphernalia. Flags are seen everywhere, as are 
flag symbols on clothing and in public displays.

2. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights - Because of 
fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in fascist 
regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain 
cases because of "need." The people tend to look the other way or 
even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long 
incarcerations of prisoners, etc.

3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying 
Cause - The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over 
the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial , 
ethnic or religious minorities; liberals; communists; socialists, 
terrorists, etc.

4. Supremacy of the Military - Even when there are widespread 
domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount 
of government funding, and the domestic agenda is neglected. 
Soldiers and military service are glamorized.

5. Rampant Sexism - The governments of fascist nations tend to 
be almost exclusively male-dominated. Under fascist regimes, 
traditional gender roles are made more rigid. Divorce, abortion and 
homosexuality are suppressed and the state is represented as the 
ultimate guardian of the family institution.

6. Controlled Mass Media - Sometimes to media is directly 
controlled by the government, but in other cases, the media is 
indirectly controlled by government regulation, or sympathetic 
media spokespeople and executives. Censorship, especially in war 
time, is very common.

7. Obsession with National Security - Fear is used as a 
motivational tool by the government over the masses.

8. Religion and Government are Intertwined - Governments 
in fascist nations tend to use the most common religion in the 
nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion. Religious rhetoric and 
terminology is common from government leaders, even when the 
major tenets of the religion are diametrically opposed to the 
government's policies or actions.

9. Corporate Power is Protected - The industrial and business 
aristocracy of a fascist nation often are the ones who put the 
government leaders into power, creating a mutually beneficial 
business/government relationship and power elite.

10. Labor Power is Suppressed - Because the organizing power 
of labor is the only real threat to a fascist government, labor unions 
are either eliminated entirely, or are severely suppressed.

11. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts - Fascist nations 
tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to higher education, and 
academia. It is not uncommon for professors and other academics 
to be censored or even arrested. Free expression in the arts and 
letters is openly attacked.

12. Obsession with Crime and Punishment - Under fascist 
regimes, the police are given almost limitless power to enforce laws. 
The people are often willing to overlook police abuses and even 
forego civil liberties in the name of patriotism. There is often a 
national police force with virtually unlimited power in fascist 
nations.

13. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption - Fascist regimes 
almost always are governed by groups of friends and associates who 
appoint each other to government positions and use governmental 
power and authority to protect their friends from accountability. It 
is not uncommon in fascist regimes for national resources and even 
treasures to be appropriated or even outright stolen by government 
leaders.

14. Fraudulent Elections - Sometimes elections in fascist nations 
are a complete sham. Other times elections are manipulated by 
smear campaigns against or even assassination of opposition 
candidates, use of legislation to control voting numbers or political 
district boundaries, and manipulation of the media. Fascist nations 
also typically use their judiciaries to manipulate or control elections.

                                                   Dr. Lawrence Britt

The above fourteen point definition of fascism clearly describes the 
current state of the United States of America, particularly under 
the second Bush Administration - a regime awash in corruption, 
secrecy, theocracy, militarism and election fraud. Never before in 
the history of this country have the people as a whole been 
rendered so powerless by a ruling, corporate, elite and gang of 
"Project For a New Century" imperialists.

Given the media control by a handful of powerful and unelected 
few, never before has the need for radical reforms been so 
necessary, and yet so difficult to mount.

As for the fourteen points, the only point which is no longer quite 
so applicable and defining today is that of economic Nationalism. 
While the flags may still wave, the country is being economically 
dismantled by a forced trade regime - i.e., an undemocratic, GATT-
NAFTA, scheme written by and for mega-corporate interests. 
Forced interdependence, reward of the greater slave, giving away 
our industrial base to undemocratic powers, a war to divert our 
attention from the destruction of freedom, privacy and democracy 
at home is the order of the day. Added to this is the deliberate ruin 
of our currency to achieve a semblance of trade balance... an 
impossible feat once you no longer domestically manufacture 
goods to export and your service sector is also being decimated by 
outsourcing.

In short, preemptive wars and imperialism aside, the fascism we 
see today is not one aimed at strengthening the country but, 
rather, in reducing it to second and third-world status via a 
process of "harmonization" the people no longer control, and via 
interest-bearing debt ruin. It is only our remaining freedom, 
independence, wealth, Constitution and Internet democracy which 
stand in the way of a completed "Trilateralism" - i.e., a well-
known, decades-old, ruling elite, scheme to reduce nation states to 
pawns in a corporate, controlled, global, fascist state and secure 
the neo-enclosures of the 21st century.




"If American democracy ceases to move forward as a living force, 
seeking day and night by peaceful means to better the lot of our 
citizens, fascism will grow in strength in our land."

                                                Franklin D. Roosevelt


"The next step in a fascist government is the combination under an 
energetic leader of a number of men who possess more than the 
average share of leisure, brutality, and stupidity. The next step is to 
fascinate fools and muzzle the intelligent, by emotional excitement 
on the one hand and terrorism on the other."

                                                     Bertrand Russell


"Without exhaustive debate, even heated debate, of ideas and 
programs, free government would weaken and wither. But if we 
allow ourselves to be persuaded that every individual or party that 
takes issue with our own convictions is necessarily wicked or 
treasonous then, indeed, we are approaching the end of freedom's 
road."

                                                 Dwight D. Eisenhower

                 - The Dangerous American Fascist -

"The dangerous American fascist is the man who wants to do in the 
United States in an American way what Hitler did in Germany in a 
Prussian way. The American fascist would prefer not to use violence. 
His method is to poison the channels of public information. With a 
fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the 
public but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving 
the fascist and his group more money or more power...

Still another danger is represented by those who, paying lip service 
to democracy and the common welfare, in their insatiable greed for 
money and the power which money gives, do not hesitate 
surreptitiously to evade the laws designed to safeguard the public 
from monopolistic extortion...

The American fascists are most easily recognized by their deliberate 
perversion of truth and fact. Their newspapers and propaganda 
carefully cultivate every fissure of disunity, every crack in the 
common front against fascism... They claim to be super-patriots, but 
they would destroy every liberty guaranteed by the Constitution. 
They demand free enterprise, but are the spokesmen for monopoly 
and vested interest. Their final objective toward which all their 
deceit is directed is to capture political power so that, using the 
power of the state and the power of the market simultaneously, they 
may keep the common man in eternal subjection."

                                               Henry A. Wallace, 1944

                        - Economic Fascism -

"When most people hear the word `fascism' they naturally think of 
its ugly racism and anti-Semitism as practiced by the totalitarian 
regimes of Mussolini and Hitler. But there was also an economic 
policy component of fascism, known in Europe during the 1920s 
and '30s as "corporatism," that was an essential ingredient of 
economic totalitarianism as practiced by Mussolini and Hitler.

So- called corporatism was adopted in Italy and Germany during the 
1930s and was held up as a "model" by quite a few intellectuals and 
policy makers in the United States and Europe. A version of 
economic fascism was in fact adopted in the United States in the 
1930s and survives to this day...

So-called "corporatism"... stands in stark contrast to the classical 
liberal idea that individuals have natural rights that pre-exist 
government; that government derives its "just powers" only through 
the consent of the governed; and that the principal function of 
government is to protect the lives, liberties, and properties of its 
citizens, not to aggrandize the state.

Mussolini viewed these liberal ideas (in the European sense of the 
word "liberal") as the antithesis of fascism: "The Fascist conception 
of life," Mussolini wrote, "stresses the importance of the State and 
accepts the individual only in so far as his interests coincide with the 
State. It is opposed to classical liberalism [which] denied the State 
in the name of the individual; Fascism reasserts the rights of the 
State as expressing the real essence of the individual." Mussolini 
thought it was unnatural for a government to protect individual 
rights: "The maxim that society exists only for the well-being and 
freedom of the individuals composing it does not seem to be in 
conformity with nature's plans." "If classical liberalism spells 
individualism," Mussolini continued, "Fascism spells government."

Another result of the close "collaboration" between business and 
government in Italy was `a continual interchange of personnel 
between the. . . civil service and private business.' Because of this 
`revolving door' between business and government, Mussolini had 
`created a state within the state to serve private interests which are 
not always in harmony with the general interests of the nation.' 
Mussolini's `revolving door' swung far and wide...

The whole idea behind collectivism in general and fascism in 
particular is to make citizens subservient to the state and to place 
power over resource allocation in the hands of a small elite... Such 
decisions should be made by a "dominant class" he labeled "the 
elite."

                                                  Thomas J. DiLorenzo


"It remains to be seen whether the world will revert to fascism. But 
there are certainly signs that a planet well-stocked with 
authoritarian capitalist regimes is in the cards. Liberal capitalist 
nations are becoming more authoritarian under the threat of 
terrorist attacks... Meanwhile, the globe is well furnished with 
capitalist setups that were never liberal in the first place, as well as 
with regimes whose former colonial proprietors exported market 
forces to their shores while forgetting to include democratic 
institutions in the cargo. The assumption that the free market and 
political democracy go together naturally was always pretty dubious, 
and fascism is one refutation of it."

                                                       Terry Eagleton


"Perhaps the most serious threat of `galloping conservatism' is that 
in a time of crisis it could easily be transformed into full-blown 
fascism. When people are afraid they are susceptible to trading away 
their civil liberties to protect their `things.' One of the arch apostles 
of conservative economics, Milton Freidman, has already said that, 
given the choice between preserving American constitutional 
freedoms and the economic freedom to make a dollar without 
interference, he would choose economic freedom hands down... how 
tragically ironic if conservative Americans bartered away their 
constitutional liberties to preserve their affluent lifestyles."

                                                             Tom Sine


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"In times of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act."
   ---   George Orwell


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