Saturday, January 24, 2009

Fascism In America?

Several weeks ago someone who I have a great deal of respect for told me that he thought America had become a fascist country. Thinking of the excesses of Hitler, the gas chambers of Nazi Germany which murdered so many people, and the other fascists from the WWII era I responded to him that, “While America has a great many problems, I feel that using the word fascism to describe the American political system is grammatically incorrect. A bit excessive.”

This conversation (by email) has been playing over in my mind off-and-on since then.

I hold a University Baccalaureate degree in Political Science (Honors). But I earned this degree 40 years ago, and now in 2009 I couldn’t really come up with a satisfactory and concrete definition for fascism. So this morning I did some research on the subject. It turns out that I am not alone. There is significant disagreement among authorities about how to define the word.

However, the more I looked into it, the more I kept finding very uncomfortable similarities between what America actually does in real life and many of the concepts of fascism.

Since the administration of President Ronald Reagan, America has been increasingly ruled by authoritarians. These men have radically increased the power of the president, to the detriment of the Congress and the average person (i.e., the voter). The separation between church and state mandated in our Constitution has been intentionally weakened and in some cases almost totally dismantled.

There has been an ongoing redistribution of wealth. Despite what the right wing types tell us, this has not been the Robin Hood kind if redistribution from rich to poor, but from the working and middle classes to the top 5% of wealthiest people in America.

Each decade a smaller percent of Americans have employer paid health care or reliable pensions which will provide for a retirement in dignity.

Deregulation of the financial system has resulted in massive fraud. The old, poor, the weak, and the poorly educated members of society are the most visible targets. Their meager wealth has been openly stolen by the wealthiest members of society.

Deregulation of business has meant that the human food supply in America is no longer regarded as the safest in the world. Children’s toys made in China and imported into America continue to be found to have grossly excessive levels of lead in them.

Important elections have been openly stolen against the will of the people. See Bush vs. Gore in Florida.

Militarism has grown and concepts like preemptive strikes or preemptive wars no longer seem particularly anti-American to many people. Secret prisons and indefinite detention without any recourse to the legal system have become a reality. So has torture and rendition of suspects to countries which openly do torture.

Torture forces one to self-incriminate, even though this is prohibited by the fifth amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Torture of enemy combatants and of political prisoners has been supported from the very top of government - the President and Vice President. And most of the career military was all too happy to go along. Even top TV shows like the wildly popular “24” now tacitly support the concept of using violence and torturing confessions out of people.

Rampant government wire tapping of telephone calls and email without prior court orders or proper court oversight has become routine. This has been proven not just to be overseas phone calls and emails, but also domestic phone and email traffic.

Even though the people in power have claimed to be devoutly and wildly religious, they no longer show basic Christian compassion for the weak, the meek, or the poor. Each year the gap between the super rich and the normal person grows. Each year the percent of American citizens who do not have health insurance or access to adequate health care grows.

The percentage of taxes paid by the rich is now much smaller than the percentage of taxes paid by working class people. FAR lower. So this transfer of wealth from the middle class to the super wealthy continues.

So has America become a fascist state? Probably, in many ways. But I still think that using this word is excessively inflammatory. If we are going to solve the massive problems that America currently faces, we need to try and gather together as many supporters as possible. And intentionally using inflammatory language alienates most people.
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