America was one of the few world powers that did not succumb to the siren song of fascism following the Great Depression. We all know of the movements in places like Germany & Italy, but the effects of the Depression were farther reaching than that. In Hungary, Gyula Gömbös rose to power in 1932, and the Iron Guard movement swept into power in Romania in 1933. France had a major Fascist riot in 1934 and Greece, Lithuania, Poland and Yugoslavia all developed governments with fascist underpinnings. Brazil and Chile had fascist uprisings and, most distressingly, dictator Francisco Franco had a fascist-style government in place until 1975.
For reference, Watergate concluded in 1974.
These are words from Benito Mussolini's articulation on Fascism, which can be found here in its entirety:
For reference, Watergate concluded in 1974.
These are words from Benito Mussolini's articulation on Fascism, which can be found here in its entirety:
" Fascism wants man to be active and to engage in action with all his energies; it wants him to be manfully aware of the difficulties besetting him and ready to face them. It conceives of life as a struggle in which it behooves a man to win for himself a really worthy place, first of all by fitting himself (physically, morally, intellectually) to become the implement required for winning it. As for the individual, so for the nation, and so for mankind (4). Hence the high value of culture in all its forms (artistic, religious, scientific) (5) and the outstanding importance of education. Hence also the essential value of work, by which man subjugates nature and creates the human world (economic, political, ethical, and intellectual).
This positive conception of life is obviously an ethical one. It invests the whole field of reality as well as the human activities which master it. No action is exempt from moral judgment; no activity can be despoiled of the value which a moral purpose confers on all things. Therefore life, as conceived of by the Fascist, is serious, austere, and religious; all its manifestations are poised in a world sustained by moral forces and subject to spiritual responsibilities. The Fascist disdains an “easy" life (6).
The Fascist conception of life is a religious one (7), in which man is viewed in his immanent relation to a higher law, endowed with an objective will transcending the individual and raising him to conscious membership of a spiritual society. "Those who perceive nothing beyond opportunistic considerations in the religious policy of the Fascist regime fail to realize that Fascism is not only a system of government but also and above all a system of thought."This second block comes from the Fascist Decalogue, to which I have provided the link as well.
1. Know that the Fascist and in particular the soldier, must not believe in perpetual peace.
2. Days of imprisonment are always deserved.
3. The nation serves even as a sentinel over a can of petrol.
4. A companion must be a brother, first, because he lives with you, and secondly because he thinks like you.
5. The rifle and the cartridge belt, and the rest, are confided to you not to rust in leisure, but to be preserved in war.
6. Do not ever say "The Government will pay . . . " because it is you who pay; and the Government is that which you willed to have, and for which you put on a uniform.
7. Discipline is the soul of armies; without it there are no soldiers, only confusion and defeat.
8. Mussolini is always right.
9. For a volunteer there are no extenuating circumstances when he is disobedient.
10. One thing must be dear to you above all: the life of the Duce.
(1934)
The ideas laid forth here are similar, if not identical, to the ideas currently being trumpeted by the American Republican party: it has its own media, it has its own culture. The current American Republican can exist in an echo chamber where only its ideas are championed: it can buy Republican movies, watch Republican TV, read Republican books, and have Republican discussions with other Republicans on places such as Conservapedia.
(According to Conservapedia, Mussolini loved FDR's ideas so much... he then went to war with him less than ten years later.)
Now is the age of Donald Trump and permanent posturing. The world must be kept safe for the majority white, majority rich, and majority sociopathic. Anyone who doesn't agree with you must be wrong, or there's some sinister motive keeping your one correct truth from being heard. This close-minded, hateful and violent ideology thrives on perceived victimhood, driving a culture of conspiracy and cover-up that borders on fetishism. Fearing that their time as lords of Earth is coming to an end, they wish to strike out at anything contrary, and attempt at all costs to remove the idea of compromise. The increasing insular nature of the American Republican party, seen most disturbingly in the maniacal "Tea Party" movement, is nothing more than a move toward fascist policies that seek to hold up a shrinking minority of Americans to be worshiped by the rest of society, fattened by government, and most importantly, never questioned or challenged in the hegemony they have created.
There is no better time and no better way to say it. There is fascism in America. It is coming, and it can happen here. In many ways, it already is. I leave you with those quote, often misattributed to the author Sinclair Lewis, and explained here:
- When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.
- Many variants of this exist, but the earliest known incident of such a comment appears to be a partial quote from James Waterman Wise, Jr., reported in a 1936 issue of The Christian Century that in a recent address here before the liberal John Reed club said that Hearst and Coughlin are the two chief exponents of fascism in America. If fascism comes, he added, it will not be identified with any "shirt" movement, nor with an "insignia," but it will probably be "wrapped up in the American flag and heralded as a plea for liberty and preservation of the constitution."[1]
- Another early quote is that of Halford E. Luccock, in Keeping Life Out of Confusion (1938): When and if fascismcomes to America it will not be labeled "made in Germany"; it will not be marked with a swastika; it will not even be called fascism; it will be called, of course, "Americanism." Harrison Evans Salisbury in 1971 remarked about Lewis: "Sinclair Lewis aptly predicted in It Can't Happen Here that if fascism came to America it would come wrapped in the flag and whistling 'The Star Spangled Banner.'" [2]
- ↑ The Christian Century, Volume 53, Feb 5, 1936, p 245
- ↑ p. 29, The Many Americas Shall Be One, Harrison Evans Salisbury. Published by W. W. Norton, 1971.
At Your Service,
Doremus Jessup
