Our leaders, often echoed by warmongers, raise the cry of “appeasement” in order to rally Americans around their latest wars and warring. They raise in the minds of many a risk of terrorist invasions and attacks, from within and without.
The labeling of domestic persons as “terrorists” is becoming more common. The labeling of any domestic act of violence as terrorist is entering the common conversation.
Peaceful protests and demonstrations, anti-government rhetoric, and other activities right down to that of little kids are increasingly being labeled and thought of as terrorist. The government is successfully creating a phantom domestic enemy that enhances its own controlling presence and lends it a measure of respect that it doesn’t deserve. This is the behavior of a fascist state.
This risk of terrorism is minimal in absolute terms. It is minimal in relative terms too as compared with a far, far greater prospect that has already invaded the land and continues to threaten all of us. That risk is the fascist state. This is a genuine fascist threat, and it far surpasses any terrorist threat whatsoever that the state is exploiting for purposes of its own enlargement.
Our government’s entire foreign and domestic militarized response to heightened perceptions of terrorism is a fraud. It is the fraud generated by a fascist state and designed to build up that fascist state to an even greater degree. The Department of Homeland Security is emblematic of this fascist aggrandizement.
The real threat America faces is the fascist threat of its own state and government. The threat is of growing fascist state invasions of freedom, personal dignity, privacy, property, political power, movement, justice, personal belief and speech. The threat is of growing totalitarianism.
America is not as obviously totalitarian as noted examples in the past in other countries, although even in the details there is a growing correspondence and resemblance. It is in the broader picture that the parallels become evident.
How did Germany go fascist? The fascist state attracted converts and supporters in two main ways. One, it offered solutions to problems peculiar to the Germany of that time. Two, it offered appeals that would satisfy deeply-held desires and views peculiar to Germans of that time. Its solutions and appeals were broad enough to put together a coalition of Left and Right.
In his brilliant talk and essay, The Fascist Threat, Lew Rockwell explains how the New Deal similarly entrenched fascism in America. (See also here.) The American problems were not the same as those of the Germany. The different psychology of Americans meant different appeals appeared here. Yet the process was the same. The fascist state, German or American, offers solutions to problems; and it markets appeals that are supposed to satisfy psychological needs.
The American fascist state continues to this day. It is evolving. As problems change and as the psychology of Americans changes, the fascist state changes the details of its solutions and appeals. The main constant is that Washington presents itself as solving problems and satisfying us. There are other broad similarities that define the fascist state as well, and Lew explains these with his customary clarity.
Fascism won’t go away until enough Americans recognize that Washington has no solutions to our problems and offers destructive appeals. Better still, Americans need to recognize that Washington’s policies and appeals are highly destructive. The fascist state is a fraud.
We should not look for exact parallels in the details of American fascism that mirror the details of Italian or German fascism because the problems and appeals vary for different times, countries and peoples. However, the process by which fascism entrenches itself is the same. The fascist state in all cases offers false hopes.
More broadly, the belief that the fascist state solves problems and satisfies other desires of a people is one variant of a broader belief in statism. This is a belief that personal and social problems can be handled effectively by the State. Statism is a belief that the centralized powers of the State can ameliorate or resolve social, economic, psychological and other kinds of problems.
The belief that centralized power is a good thing, even an essential and necessary thing, is the foundation that supports the state and the fascist state, in particular.
There is not widespread recognition that this belief is false.
There is not widespread recognition that this belief is a major cause of problems, not a solution.
There is a recognizable measure of disillusionment with particular policies of the state, but this has not yet been translated into a disbelief in the state itself.
The current White House occupant presented himself as a problem-solver who’d use government to solve problems. This is the statist mindset. He evidently has leftist-socialist-progressive leanings, but like all presidents since FDR who have that bias, he has been perfectly content with working it out and putting it into effect via the fascist state.
Nixon should have said of American politicians “We are all fascists now.”
But as with all politicians being Keynesians now, so with all being fascists now. Repeated applications of Keynesianism and fascism haven’t solved any problems. They’ve made them all worse. They’ve created new problems.
Militarism is a facet of the fascist state. America’s continual wars overseas are related to the fascist state.
These wars and the domestic (and fascist) war on drugs have caused militarized police forces and deadly police violence across America. Riots in Ferguson bear a direct relation to these causes. Fascism has corrupted the justice system.
Fascism has taken over the political system and it’s invaded the social system.
Neither major political party offers a choice that’s different from fascism.
This situation will not change until many more Americans decide that statism is the problem, not the solution.
9:08 am on November 29, 2014
