RIP Terri

Mike Keefe, The Denver Post
© Copyright 2005 Mike Keefe All rights reserved

"America is a nation with a mission" - George W. Bush

Is America Becoming Fascist?
CounterPunch
October 26, 2002



Since mainstream left-liberal media do not seriously ask this question, the analysis of what has gone wrong and where we are heading has been mostly off-base. Investigation of the kinds of under-handed, 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." Liberals insist that this regime must be treated under the rules of "politics as usual." But this doesn't consider that one election has already been stolen, and that September's repeat of irregularities in Florida was a clear warning that more such thuggery is on the way. If the "f" word is uttered, liberals are quick to note certain obvious dissimilarities with previous variants of fascism and say that what is happening in America is not fascist. It took German justice minister Herta Daeubler-Gmelin to make the comparison explicit (under present American rules of political discourse, she has been duly sacked from her cabinet post); but at the liberal New York Times or The Nation, American writers dare not speak the truth.

The blinkered assertion that we are immune to the virus ignores degrees of convergence and distinction based on the individual patient's history. The Times and other liberal voices have been obsessed over the last year with the rise of minority fascist parties in the Netherlands, France, and other European countries. They have questioned the tastefulness of new books and movies about Hitler, and again demonized such icons of Nazism as Leni Riefenstahl. Is this perhaps a displacement of American anxiety onto the safer European scene, liberal intellectuals here not wanting to confront the troubling truth? The pace of events in the last year has been almost as blindingly fast as it was after Hitler's Machtergreifung and the consolidation of fascist power in 1933. Speed stuns and silences.

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," and that a "primal being" such as Hitler "will always crop up again." Is Frankel really redirecting his anxiety about the primal being that has arisen in America? When Frankel says that "Speer far more than Hitler [because the former came from a culturally refined background] makes us realize how fragile these precautions are, and how the ground on which we all stand is always threatened," is this an oblique reference to the ground shifting from under us?

The proposed Iraqi adventure, which is only the first step in a more ambitious militarist agenda, has been opposed by the most conservative warmongers of past administrations. If the test of any theory is its predictive capacity, Bush's extreme risk-taking is better explained by the fascist model. Purely economic motives are a large part of the story, but there is a deeper derivation that exceeds such mundane rationales. Several of the apparent contradictions in Bush's governance make perfect sense if the fascist prism is applied, but not with the normal perspective.

To pose the question doesn't mean that this 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 world war (including in three major addresses, and now the National Security Strategy document), adventurous and unprecedented military doctrines, suspension of much of the Bill of Rights, and clear signals that a declaration of emergency to crush remaining dissent is on the way, surely it is time to analyze the situation differently.

Absent that perspicacity, false diagnoses and prescriptions will continue. It is fine to be concerned about tyrannous Muslim regimes, and surely they need to set their own house in order, but not now, not in this context, and not under the auspices of the American fascist regime. Liberals don't yet realize, or fail to admit, that they may have been condemned to irrelevance for quite some time; the death blow against even mild welfare statism might already have been struck.

The similarities between American fascism and particularly the National Socialist precedent, both historical and theoretical, are remarkable. Fascism is home, it is here to stay, and it better be countered with all the intellectual resources at our disposal.

American fascism is tapping into the perennial complaint against liberalism: that it doesn't provide an authentic sense of belonging to the majority of people. And that is a criticism difficult to dismiss out of hand. As the language of liberalism has become flat and predictable, some Americans have become more ready to accept an alternative, no matter how ridiculous, as long as it sounds vigorous and muscular.

America today is seeking a return to some form of vitalism, some organic, volkisch order that will "unite" the blue and red states in an eternal Volkgemeinschaft; is in a state of perpetual war and militaristic aggression targeting all potential counters to hegemony; has been coercing and blackmailing its own victims and oppressed (justified by anti-political correctness rhetoric) to return to a mythical national consensus; has introduced surveillance technology to demolish the private sphere to an extent unimaginable in the recent past; and fetishizes technology as the futuristic solution to age-old ills of alienation and mistrust.

And we are right in the mainstream of the Western philosophical and political tradition in this subtle (overnight?) transformation. Liberal democracy was replaced by Mussolini by these two Holy Trinities: Believe, Obey, Fight, and Order, Authority, Justice. These slogans seem to replace every liberal system sooner or later. Italian propagandistic slogans included: War is to man as childbirth is to woman, and Better to live one day as a lion than a hundred years as a sheep. Sooner or later, the mob is persuaded that fascism best addresses its unfulfilled spiritual and psychological needs. Sooner or later there is a Hitler, and even if there isn't a leader as charismatic as him, there is an anti-modernity counter-revolution.

The enlightenment everywhere has contained the seeds of its own destruction. Fascism merely borrows from the enlightenment's credo that violence may sometimes be necessary to achieve valid political ends, and that human reason alone can lead humanity to utopia. Is Nazism an absolute aberration? Is America totally immune to fascism? Then we might as well discredit Rousseau's "general will," Hegel's historical spirit, Goethe and Schelling's romanticization of nature and genius, Darwin's natural selection, and Nietzsche's superman. When all is said and done, a Kant or Mill is never a match for a Nietzsche or Sorel. Industrial malaise (now post-industrial disorder), evaded by the dead-ends and delusions of liberalism, leads only to a romantic revolution, which is fine as long as it is in the hands of Byron, Keats, Carlyle, Ruskin and Arnold, but becomes eventually converted to a propaganda-saturated Third Way. Since liberalism doesn't take up the challenge, fascism steps in to say that it offers an answer to centrifugal difference and lack of common purpose, and that it will dare to link industrial prosperity with communal goals.

How great a deviation from the roots of the enlightenment, the foundations of its self-justification, is the Manichean demonization of enemies, aliens, impure races, and barbaric others? America today wants to be communal and virile; it seeks to overcome what is presented by propagandists as the unreasonable demands for affirmative action and reparations by minorities and women; it wants to revalorize nation and region and race to take control of the future; it seeks to remold the nation through propaganda and charismatic leadership, into overcoming the social divisiveness of capitalism and democracy.

We have our own nationalist myths that our brand of fascism taps right into. In that sense, America is not exceptional. In the near future, America can be expected to embark on a more radical search to define who is not part of the natural order: exclusion, deportation, and eventually extermination, might again become the order of things. Of course, we can notice obvious differences from the German nationalist tradition: but that is precisely the task of scholars to delineate, rather than pretend that fascism occurred only in Italy and Germany and satellite states in the first half of the century, and occurs today only in Europe in minor movements that have no chance of gaining political supremacy.

It is wrong to pretend that fascism takes hold only in the midst of extreme economic depression or political chaos. (A perception of crisis or instability is indispensable to realizing fascism, however.) Fascism can emerge when things are not all that bad economically, politically, and culturally. The surprise about Weimar Germany is how well the political system was at times working, with proportional representation (almost an ideal of strong democracy theorists) providing political expression for a full range of ideologies. Germany was economically strong, an industrial powerhouse, despite having had to overcome massive disabilities imposed by the Versailles Treaty. In the early thirties, Hitler's rise was facilitated by massive unemployment (perhaps forty percent of Germans were unemployed), but this was a phenomenon throughout the Western world.

The key point to note is that at many junctures along the way, it was possible that Hitler's rise might never have happened. And that the elites accepted Hitler as the best possible option. All this makes Hitler and Nazism unexceptional. The basic paradigm remains more or less intact: we only have to account for variations in the American model. Capitalism today is different, so are the postmodern means of propaganda, and so are the technological tools of suppression. Besides, American foundational myths vary from European ones, and the romanticism propounded by Goethe, Schelling, Wagner and Nietzsche contrasts with a different kind of holistic urge in America. But that is only a matter of variation, not direct opposition. Liberals who say that demographics work against a Republican majority in the early twenty-first century do have a point; but fascism can occur precisely at that moment of truth, when the course of political history can definitely tend to one direction or another. A mere push can set things on a whole different course, regardless of underlying cultural or demographic trends. 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 twenty percent or so can be swayed around with smart propaganda to particular causes. So the existence of liberal institutions is not necessarily inconsistent with fascism's political dominance.

With all of Germany's cultural strength, brutality won out; the same analysis can apply to America. Hitler never won clear majorities; yet once he was in power, he crushed all dissent. Consider the parallels to the fateful election of 2000. Hitler's ascent to power was facilitated by the political elites; again, note the similarities to the last two years. Hitler took advantage of the Reichstag fire to totally change the shape of 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, even for the most massive offenses against humanity; note again the similarity of a pseudo-legal shield for the actions of the American fascists. One can go on and on in this vein.

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

A. The Fascist Negations

• Anti-liberalism
  
• Anti-communism
  
• Anti-conservatism (though with the understanding that fascist groups . . .[are] more willing to undertake temporary alliances with groups from any other sector, most commonly the right).

B. Ideology and Goals

• Creation of a new nationalist authoritarian state.
  
• Organization of some new kind of regulated, multi-class, integrated national economic structure.
  
• The goal of empire.
  
• Specific espousal of an idealist, voluntarist creed.
  
• C. 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.

American fascism denies affiliation with liberalism, communism, and conservatism. The first two denials are obvious; the third requires a little analysis, but fascism is not conservatism and it takes issue with conservatism's anti-revolutionary stance. Conservatism's libertarian strand, an American staple (think of the recent protestations of Dick Armey, the departing Bob Barr, and the Cato Institute against some of the grossest violations of civil liberties), would not agree with fascism's "nationalist authoritarian state." Reaganite anti-government rhetoric might well have been a precursor to fascism, but Hayekian free market and deregulationist ideology cannot be labeled fascism.

Continuing to look at Payne's list, we note that the goal of "empire," that much proscribed word in official American vocabulary, has found open acceptance over the last year among the fascist vanguard. Voluntarism has been elevated to iconic status in the current American manifestation of fascism. It takes a bit more effort to notice American fascism's "emphasis on aesthetic structure. . .stressing romantic and mystical aspects," but reflection suggests many innovative stylistic emphases. The mass party militia, especially large bands of organized, militarized youth, seems to be missing ­ for now. Violence is glorified for its own sake. The masculine principle has been elevated as the basis of policy-making. Command is authoritarian, charismatic, and personal. It is true that a charismatic leader like Hitler is missing from the scene; but one would have to ask if this is not a redundancy in the American historical context. Perhaps we are a society mobilized by very small degrees of charisma, unlike more informed, impassioned, ideologically committed electorates.

Roger Griffin holds that fascism consists of a series of myths: fascism is anti-liberal, anti-conservative, anti-rational, charismatic, socialist, totalitarian, racist and eclectic. If one wishes to argue that American fascism is by no means socialist, one ought to take a deeper look at National Socialism's conception of socialism. In a sense, America is a socialist society, to the extent that the government is the main driving force behind technology, innovation, and science: the military-industrial-academic complex. National Socialism was comforting to the right-wing capitalists because they believed that socialism was a convenient fiction for the ideology. Nevertheless, fascism's vitalism and holism militate against any facile interpretations of what socialism means. Fascism is eclectic and ready to abandon economic principle for what it perceives as the greater good of the nation. As Sternhell has described it for Germany, fascism in the American synthesis is a cultural rebellion, a revolutionary ideology; totalitarianism is of its very essence. There are more similarities than immediately apparent between Marxism as it was put into practice by the twentieth century communist states, and "socialist" ideology put into practice by the various fascist states.

Ian Kershaw has evaluated the similarities between Italian and German fascism:

Extreme chauvinistic nationalism with pronounced imperialistic expansionist tendencies;

an anti-socialist, anti-Marxist thrust aimed at the destruction of working class organizations and their Marxist political philosophy;

the basis in a mass party drawing from all sectors of society, though with pronounced support in the middle class and proving attractive to the peasantry and to various uprooted or highly unstable sectors of the population;

fixation on a charismatic, plebiscitary, legitimized leader;

extreme intolerance towards all oppositional and presumed oppositional groups, expressed through vicious terror, open violence and ruthless repression;

glorification of militarism and war, heightened by the backlash to the comprehensive socio-political crisis in Europe arising from the First World War;

dependence upon an "alliance" with existing elites, industrial, agrarian, military and bureaucratic, for their political breakthrough;

and, at least an initial function, despite a populist-revolutionary anti-establishment rhetoric, in the stabilization or restoration of social order and capitalist structures.

Viewed in this perspective, 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 Wilsonian idealist terms for mass acceptance. Unions can still be considered an oppositional, populist force, but working class cohesion has nearly been destroyed. Still, it needs to be said that instead of fascism appealing across class and geographical lines, the country remains divided between the liberal (urban, coastal) and proto-fascist (rural, Southern) factions. Also, the plebiscitary leader has not yet fully emerged. Oppositional groups are often self-silencing, but the 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. Although not all elites have yet been co-opted, think of Dershowitz's advocacy of torture and Larry Summers's patriotic swing. There is general agreement on militaristic aims. The attempted stabilization of the social order in the form of the culture wars fought in the previous decade is one of the less appreciated manifestations of emerging fascism.

George Mosse describes fascism as viewing itself in a permanent state of war, to mobilize masculine virile energy, 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. Propaganda is pervasive in America; we only need to delineate its descent from the Nazi form. Mosse rejects the notion that fascism ruled through terror; "it was built upon a popular consensus." Fascism is a higher consensus seeking to bring about the "new man" rooted in Christian doctrine. Can there be a better description of the nineties American culture wars instigated by the proto-fascists than the following?:

When fascists spoke of culture, they meant a proper attitude toward life: encompassing the ability to accept a faith, the work ethic, and discipline, but also receptivity to art and the appreciation of the native landscape. The true community was symbolized by factors opposed to materialism, by art and literature, the symbols of the past and the stereotypes of the present. The National Socialist emphasis upon myth, symbol, literature and art is indeed common to all fascism.

Most of this is obvious, except the reference to literature and art; but think of the fetishization of the Great Books and the mythical classical curriculum by Bennett and his like. In thus viewing fascism above all as a cultural movement, the objection might be raised that American fascism lacks a distinctive stylistic expression that iconizes youth and war. Instead, it might be argued that it suffers from callow endorsement by dour old white males, whose cultural appeal is limited in the discredited stylistic forms they employ. To some extent this is true, but one must never underestimate the fertile ground American anti-intellectualism provides for more banal forms of propaganda and cultural terrorism than needed to be deployed by Nazism. (Eminem does electrocute Cheney in his video, but in real life Cheney rules.) American communication technology, as was true of Nazi Germany, has pioneered whole new methods of trivialization of "mass death" and elevation of brutality as a "great experience."

War is both necessary and great, and that is America's continuation of the fascist fascination with revitalization of "basic moral values." Furthermore, 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," which explains "the puritanism of National Socialism, its emphasis upon chastity, the family, good manners, and the banishment of women from public life." The analogs to Karl May's widely circulated novels in Weimar and Nazi Germany can probably be found here, as can America's answer to Max Nordau, rebelling against decadence in art and literature, and maintaining that "lack of clarity, inability to uphold moral standards, and absence of self-discipline all sprang from the degeneration of their [artists'] physical organism." Think only of the demonization of Mapplethorpe and others, the emasculation of the NEA, and the continued attack 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 transformation that asserts itself as such. But as noted above fascism simply takes over the liberals' language of "clarity, decency, and natural laws," as well as its ideals of "tolerance and freedom." That sounds like the sleight-of-hand performed by the fascists here. 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. Here once more, concepts that had become part and parcel of established patterns of thought were not rejected (as so many historians have claimed) but instead co-opted - fascism would bring about ideals with which people were comfortable, but only on its own terms.

So to be liberal means to be intolerant, out of sync with the American democratic spirit. That suggestion has taken hold among large numbers of people.

The current American aesthetic appreciation of technology ("smart" bombs) is also of a piece with Hitler's passion. Fascism is not a deviance from popular cultural trends, but only the taming of activism within revived nationalist myths. Mosse holds that fascism didn't diverge from mainstream European culture; it absorbed most of what held great mass appeal. It never decried workers' tastelessness; it accepted these realities. The same principles apply to American fascism.

Umberto Eco, in his essay "Ur-Fascism," identifies fourteen characteristics of "eternal fascism": not all of them have to be present at the same time for a system to be considered fascist, and some of them may even be contradictory: "There was only one Nazism, and we cannot describe the ultra-Catholic Falangism of Franco as Nazism, given that Nazism is fundamentally pagan, polytheistic, and anti-Christian, otherwise it is not Nazism." Eco is intelligent 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 a single feature from a previous fascist variant doesn't apply: "Remove the imperialist dimension from Fascism, and you get Franco or Salazar; remove the colonialist dimension, and you get Balkan Fascism. Add to Italian Fascism a dash of radical anti-Capitalism (which never appealed to Mussolini), and you get Ezra Pound. Add the cult of Celtic mythology and the mysticism of the Grail (completely extraneous to official Fascism), and you get one of the most respected gurus of Fascism, Julius Evola."
It is noteworthy about Eco's matrix that all fourteen of his characteristics of ur-fascism apply to America to some degree: 1. "the cult of tradition" (which may be "syncretic" and able to "tolerate contradictions"); 2. "the rejection of modernism" and "irrationalism"; 3. "the cult of action for action's sake"; 4. "dissent is betrayal"; 5. "fear of difference," or racism; 6. "the appeal to the frustrated middle classes" [this seems to cause the most trouble to American liberals; Eco clarifies, "In our day, in which the old 'proletarians' are becoming petits bourgeois (and the lumpen proletariat has excluded itself from the political arena), Fascism will find its audience in this new majority.]; 7. "obsession with conspiracies," along with xenophobia and nationalism; 8. "the enemy is at once too strong and too weak" [note the simultaneous characterization of Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein and no doubt future Islamic "terrorists" as capable of irrevocably harming us and being impotent to really do so]; 9. 'Pacifism is. . .collusion with the enemy," "life is a permanent war," and only a "final solution" can herald an age of peace; 10. "scorn for the weak" imposed by a mass elite; 11. "the cult of death" [American fascists ascribe this characteristic to terrorists, when in fact it is one of their own supreme defining characteristics]; 12. transferring of the "will to power onto sexual questions," or "machismo"; 13. "individuals have no rights," and fascism "has to oppose 'rotten' parliamentary governments"; and 14. "Ur-Fascism uses newspeak."

No doubt, fascism is a descriptor too carelessly thrown around; but Nixon and Reagan, no matter how reprehensible their politics, were not quite fascist. Bush is the most dangerous man in contemporary history: Hitler didn't have access to weapons that could blow up the world, and no American or other leader since World War II with access to such weapons has been as out of control. 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." And as Eco reminds us, Roosevelt issued a similar warning.

Since liberals don't understand the magnitude of the crisis global capitalism faces, they don't understand the extent of the desperate, last-ditch effort to find an ideological glue ("terror") to hold together the centrifugal forces in the American population. Part of the confusion is that this is fascism but not really fascism ­ it is only its simulation, although no less horrifying for that reason ­ because all the twentieth-century ideologies (liberalism, conservatism, and socialism) are rapidly dissolving.

- Anis Shivani

Anis Shivani studied economics at Harvard, and is the author of two novels, The Age of Critics and Memoirs of a Terrorist. He welcomes comments at: Anis_Shivani_ab92@post.harvard.edu

RFK Jr. Rant

Kennedy: Fascist America
Common Dreams
January 22, 2005



Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. wants to run for Attorney General of New York State.

He might announce his candidacy within the next two weeks.

He's the son of Robert F. Kennedy, the former Attorney General under his brother, John F. Kennedy.

In 2001, President Bush named the Justice Department building after RFK.

The young Kennedy attended the ceremony.

We asked him what he thought of President Bush naming the building after his dad.

He said he wouldn't comment on the record.

But he did call President Bush "the most corrupt and immoral President that we have had in American history."

Not that he was enamored with Senator John Kerry.

Early in the campaign, Kennedy endorsed Senator John Kerry for President, but last month he expressed disappointment in Kerry's campaign and in the Democratic Party.

"The Republicans are 95 percent corrupt and the Democrats are 75 percent corrupt," Kennedy. "They are accepting money from the same corporations. And of course, that is going to corrupt you."

He has spent the last 18 years as a sort of private attorney general -- suing polluters to clean up the Hudson River.

Kennedy says that in the late 1960s, the Hudson River was "a national joke."

"It was dead water for 20-mile stretches north of New York City and south of Albany. It caught fire. It changed colors," he said. "Today, it is the richest water body in the North Atlantic. It produces more pounds of fish per acre and more biomass per gallon than any other waterway in the Atlantic north of the equator. It is the last major river system left in the North Atlantic, on both sides, that still has strong spawning stocks of all of its historical species of migratory fish."

He is seeking to close down the Indian Point nuclear power plant 22 miles north of New York City.

"After Chernobyl, 1,000 miles around the plant were uninhabitable. One hundred miles around the plant are permanently uninhabitable," he said. "One hundred miles around Indian Point would be all of New York City. So, imagine a world without New York City. Well, the terrorists already have. According to the 9/11 Commission, Mohammed Atta cased Indian Point before deciding to bomb the World Trade Center. But he believed, erroneously as it turned out, that the plant must be so heavily guarded, that it would be impossible to crash an airliner into it."

Kennedy charges that his appearance on MSNBC's Charles Grodin show in November 1996 got Grodin fired.

Kennedy was invited on the show to talk about his book and group by the same name -- Riverkeepers.

On the show, Kennedy ripped into GE, an owner of the network, for polluting the Hudson with PCBs.

On the show, Kennedy claimed that "every woman between Oswego and Albany has elevated levels of PCBs in her milk because of GE."

Grodin was soon thereafter fired.

Kennedy wrote a book last year that he hoped would change the direction of the country.

It didn't.

But it's a great book, nonetheless.

It's called Crimes Against Nature: How George W. Bush and his Corporate Pals Are Plundering the Country and Hijacking Our Democracy (HarperCollins, 2004).

For the past couple of years, he's been giving 40 or so speeches a year, mostly in the red zone, mostly to conservative groups.

He speaks about the corporate attack on the country.

"There is no difference between the reaction I get from Republicans and Democrats, because Americans share the same values," Kennedy told us. "If you talk about these issues in terms of our national values, everybody understands it."

In the book, Kennedy implies that we live in a fascist country and that the Bush White House has learned key lessons from the Nazis.

"While communism is the control of business by government, fascism is the control of government by business," he writes. "My American Heritage Dictionary defines fascism as 'a system of government that exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership together with belligerent nationalism.' Sound familiar?"

He quotes Hitler's propaganda chief Herman Goerring: "It is always simply a matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country."

Kennedy then adds: "The White House has clearly grasped the lesson."

Kennedy also quotes Benito Mussolini's insight that "fascism should more appropriately be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power."

"The biggest threat to American democracy is corporate power," Kennedy told us. "There is vogue in the White House to talk about the threat of big government. But since the beginning of our national history, our most visionary political leaders have warned the American public against the domination of government by corporate power. That warning is missing in the national debate right now. Because so much corporate money is going into politics, the Democratic Party itself has dropped the ball. They just quash discussion about the corrosive impact of excessive corporate power on American democracy."

- Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman

Russell Mokhiber is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Corporate Crime Reporter, http://www.corporatecrimereporter.com. Robert Weissman is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Multinational Monitor, http://www.multinationalmonitor.org. They are co-authors of the forthcoming On the Rampage: Corporate Predators and the Destruction of Democracy (Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press; http://www.corporatepredators.org).

© 2004 Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman

Kristol Beats the Drum for Judicial Reform

Evolving Standards of Decency
The Weekly Standard
From the April 4, 2005 Issue



THANK GOD FOR OUR JUDGES. (Oops! Sorry. No offense, your honors. I didn't mean to write "God." Or at least I didn't mean anything specific or exclusionary or sectarian or unconstitutional by writing "God." It's just an expression I occasionally use. It does go way back in U.S. history. I hope it's okay.)

Anyway. Thank God for our robed masters. If it weren't for them, Christopher Simmons might soon be executed. In September 1993, seven months shy of his 18th birthday, Simmons decided it would be interesting to kill someone. He told his buddies they could get away with it because they were still minors. He broke into the house of Shirley Crook in Jefferson County, Missouri, bound her hands and feet, drove her to a bridge, covered her face with tape, and threw her into the Meramec River, where she drowned. He confessed to the crime, and was sentenced to death according to the laws of Missouri.

Last month the Supreme Court saved Simmons's life. The citizens, legislators, and governor of Missouri (and those of 19 other states) had, it turned out, fallen grievously and unconstitutionally behind "the evolving standards of decency that mark a maturing society." Five justices decided that the Constitution prevented anyone under the age of 18 from being sentenced to death. So Christopher Simmons will live.

It appears, at this writing, that Terri Schiavo will not. In a series of decisions in Florida state courts, Circuit Judge George Greer and his colleagues have chosen to credit the claim of Michael Schiavo that his wife long ago expressed a well-considered wish to be killed if she found herself in a disabled state. Of course, there is no reason to believe she ever seriously considered she might find herself in such a state. They have chosen to deny efforts by Terri Schiavo's mother and father to assume responsibility for their daughter's care. They have chosen to strike down legislation passed by the Florida legislature, and signed by the governor, to permit the governor to allow water and nutrition to be given to patients who leave no written directive, and to allow some recourse for family members who wish to challenge the withholding of nutrition and hydration.

Last week, federal judges chose to dismiss, out of hand, extraordinary legislation passed by the U.S. Congress and signed by the president, which asked the federal courts to take a fresh look at the case. The federal judges chose not to explain why "evolving standards of decency" might not allow Terri Schiavo to be kept alive until the case was argued in federal court. The judges assumed nothing new or meaningful would be learned from such an argument, or that the federal legislation might be found unconstitutional. The federal judges chose not to bother to explain why either might be the case.

So our judges deserve some criticism. But we should not be too harsh. For example, it would be wrong to suggest, as some conservatives have, that our judicial elite is systematically biased against "life." After all, they have saved the life of Christopher Simmons. It would be wrong to argue, as some critics have, that our judges systematically give too much weight to the husband's wishes in situations like Terri Schiavo's. After all, our judges have for three decades given husbands (or fathers) no standing at all to participate in the decision whether to kill their unborn children. It would be wrong to claim that our judges don't take seriously legislation passed by the elected representatives of the people. After all, our judges are committed to upholding the "rule of law"--though not, perhaps, the rule of actual laws passed by actual lawmakers. And it would be wrong to accuse our judges of being heartless. After all, Judges Carnes and Hull of the 11th U.S. Circuit told us, "We all have our own family, our own loved ones, and our own children."

So do we all. They deserve a judiciary that is respectful of democratic self-government and committed to a genuine constitutionalism. The Bush administration should nominate such judges, and Congress should confirm them. And the president and Congress should lead a serious national debate on the distinction between judicial independence and judicial arrogance, and on the difference between judicial review and judicial supremacy. After all, we are a "maturing society," as the Supreme Court has told us. Perhaps it is time, in mature reaction to this latest installment of what Hugh Hewitt has called a "robed charade," to rise up against our robed masters, and choose to govern ourselves. Call it Terri's revolution.

- William Kristol

© Copyright 2005, News Corporation, Weekly Standard, All Rights Reserved.

Delay Wastes no Time Capitalizing on Schiavo's Death

DeLay Statement on Terri Schiavo
U.S. Newswire
Thursday, March 31, 2005



SUGAR LAND, Texas (U.S. Newswire) - House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) today released the following statement mourning the passing of Terri Schiavo:

"Mrs. Schiavo's death is a moral poverty and a legal tragedy. This loss happened because our legal system did not protect the people who need protection most, and that will change. The time will come for the men responsible for this to answer for their behavior, but not today. Today we grieve, we pray, and we hope to God this fate never befalls another. Our thoughts and prayers are with the Schindlers and with Terri Schiavo's friends in this time of deep sorrow."

The Real Reason Behind the Schiavo Hysteria?

Schiavo Case Evolving into a Judiciary Fight
The Muskegon Chronicle
Friday, March 25, 2005



The extraordinary intervention by Congress and President Bush into the Terri Schiavo case was seen by many as a slap at states' rights and a cynical bow to the passionate and influential "Religious Right."

We think it's even more than that -- a calculated ploy on the part of Washington's more Machiavellian players to exploit both Terri Schiavo and her devout supporters for coldly political ends.

Don't get us wrong. We believe that advocates on both sides of the Schiavo case -- including most of those who debated the case in Congress -- hold honest, heartfelt opinions. This is a troubling case without easy black-and-white answers, and it deserves the agonizingly extensive attention it has received both in the courts and in the court of public opinion.

But in Congress the issue is broadening, predictably, into something more. Republican leaders are now talking in terms of speeding up the forthcoming Senate battle over future nominations to the U.S. Supreme Court and other federal judicial appointments.

Pardon us if we don't think that's coincidental. In fact, it was thoroughly predictable. The Schiavo case is a natural vehicle for rallying and energizing religious conservatives in the cause of curbing "out-of-control judges." And Republican leaders and the president knew that when they staged last weekend's melodrama, which ended in allowing Terri Schiavo's distraught parents to bring her case into the federal court system.

Don't think for a minute that congressional leaders didn't know chances were minuscule that a federal judge would overturn years of rulings by Florida state courts. After all, the case had made its way through every level of Florida's generally conservative court system over a decade. Repeated decisions there ended up in 30,000 pages of legal briefs and expert medical testimony.

But some in Congress figured last weekend's action was win-win. If a judge restored Schiavo's feeding tube, the Congressional majority could claim credit and win points with the religious right. If federal judges refused -- as was likely -- even better. With that, Terri Schiavo would become a poster child for "judicial reform."

Already Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist has been busy regaling Christian conservatives with the need for "good judges" -- presumably judges who always agree with Bill Frist -- and plans to end Democrats' ability to filibuster against judicial appointments, the so-called "Nuclear Option."

Said conservative strategist Ken Viguerie of the Schiavo case, "It is very dramatic proof of what we have been saying: That the judiciary is out of control."

Viguerie's comment is nonsense that stems from the worst kind of political cynicism. It reduces a family's emotional trauma to a tool of political propaganda.

We don't agree with Frist and Viguerie. And if current opinion polls are accurate, neither does a majority of Americans. They see the Schiavo case as one of daunting complexity, and one that demonstrates clearly why an independent judiciary is so important to this country. As New York Democratic Sen. Charles Schumer has said, the case "shows how important the courts are as a check on the overreaching majority."

Terri Schiavo, her husband and her parents deserve the compassion and prayers of all America during this horrible, painful ordeal. Those who would use them to achieve political goals, however, deserve only contempt.

A will to live by

Whether you believe Terri Schiavo should be kept alive just because she is, or mercifully be allowed to die, there is a lesson to be learned from her story. And that is the importance of making it absolutely clear whether extraordinary life-saving measures should be used in the event of a debilitating illness or accident.

In Michigan, that takes the form of a 'living will," which legal experts suggest be followed up with a health care power of attorney and a patient advocate directive.

Congress's actions of late have focussed attention on this important matter of who decides when it's time to hold on or let go. It's a decision that must be decided by loved ones, not strangers.

© 2005 Muskegon Chronicle.

Terri Schiavo Dies

Playmobil - Security Check Point

The 14 Characteristics of Fascism by Lawrence Britt

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.

Mike Lane, Cagle Cartoons
© Copyright 2005 Mike Lane All rights reserved