I do not pretend to be an expert on anything, and despite the radical tone of the title of my first post, am not a conspiracy theorist, wild eyed leftist, nor very good speller...

But I am no silly ninny either, and having awakened a few years ago from mainstream media popular culture somnambulance, have begun thinking...always a dangerous activity for those who find themselves cursed with living in "interesting times"... And interesting times these are indeed.

As a conservative blogger on a conservative website not quite correctly pointed out to me, whoever first starts lobbing accusations of naziism or compares one's opponents to Adolph Hitler, has lost the arguement.  Again, seldom one to play by the rules of my enemies, I nonetheless concede the hyperbolic nature and oft overused, ad hominum character of these terms...naziism was so specific, in time and place, and Hitler so monstrously off the scale evil, that I hesitate to go there to describe the nature of America's most dangerous, insidious, and powerful enemies today.  "Fascists", however, although nonetheless inflamatory, I think falls sufficiently close to the nature of these folks as to warrant reasonable consideration...

But first allow me to pick apart my description, defining it piece by piece...

OBVERSE...

Traditional fascists of 20's and 30's Italy, Germany, and Spain, although supported by some business and private interests, nonetheless first assumed political control, usually in difficult economic periods, then used the aparatus of goverment to impose power and co-opt the private business interests of the nation, actually including such in advisory capacity to the polity.   Obverse fascists consist of powerful segments of private business interests, especially corporate military industrial type entities.  Since around the time of Nixon, these groups, fearing what they (perhaps somewhat rightly, though exageratedly) saw as creeping socialism, have funded two phenomena which have been used to mold public opinion, support ideological beliefs, and control politicians.  The first was a right wing alternative media, which grew in size and acceptance throughout the 70's and 80's, funded through many money losing years by wealthy right wing ideologues.  By the late 80's, early 90's, it basically merged with the main stream media and absorbed it, as a result of the repeal of federal laws which had assured a fairly unbiased, definately dispersed ownership media, capable of disseminating enough information to the American public so as to allow we, the average Joes and Janes, to make fairly informed political decisions without being forced to dig too hard, read too much between the lines, in our ever more busy struggle to survive and prosper economically.  Within a very short time, a relatively few large private entities had bought up the vast majority of media outlets of all types and were almost free to choose and present news as they liked, with precious little sense of duty to fairness or accuracy.  When factual relativity and opinion "news" replaced journalistic professionalism, a silent clarion call was sounded with dangerous implications for a democracy dependant on free flow of information in order for lots of citizens to make responsible decisions.  For example, if GE owns NBC, will NBC report anything terribly unflattering about GE, ever? 

Another, related phenomenon has been the growth of rightist "think tanks".  If the best research of peer reviewed academia counters one's preconcieved, self serving, ideology, what is one to do?  One option is to cease punching circles into squares, in terms of reality, and change the way one sees the world in order to more accurately incorporate dissonant evidence. But monied ideologues instead created an alternative, ideologically based, pseudo scholarly, propaganda legitimizing, lie supporting  structure in the form of almost innumerable "think tanks".  Notice how many mainstream news organs rely for their "expert" opinions not upon (supposedly liberal) respected, peer reviewed, traditional academic institutions (universities), but on such ideology supporting fake scholarly fronts as the Cato Institute, American Enterprise Institute, and that typically hypocritically named Heritage Foundation.  Whenever you hear that "research" from one of these groups is the basis of some opinion or policy decision, understand what this means...consider the dubious, if high falootin' sounding nature of the source...

DEMOCRATIC...

 Fascism, by its nature, depends upon a national identification, an agreed upon view of one's nation, incorporating (and often exagerating) all those positive, cherished, ideals that make a citizen proud to call him or herself a member of said nation.  In many ways, fascism is nationalism taken to an absurd and dangerous level.  It also includes a certain undemocratic view, and a form of foriegn adventure militarism, an adoration of force, both of which, Cincinatus type military leaders such as General Clark and all the brave citizen soldiers of our great republic withstanding, are contrary to American tradition.  Words such as "democracy" and "liberty" are at the very core of American nationalism, or as we term it, "patriotism."  To abandon or outright destroy at least the appearance of a democratic, free, society would be untenable and unacceptable to the vast majority of Americans.  Therefore it is necesary for the modern American fascists to create and maintain a facade of a democracy - a hollow form without substance which can be cynically manipulated with vast private fortunes, which, as a result of the severely compromised and dependant-upon-their-largest-donaters nature of almost ALL politicians of BOTH major parties, consistantly votes upon legislation that benefits the powerful few and keeps the masses of common folk squeezed and anxiously wondering why their politicians seem so distant and out of touch...if the common people, so pop culturally lobotomized and trivially isolated, even notice...

FASCISM...

 Undemocratic, glorying in military might and conquest, seeing of one's nation as qualitatively better than all others and thereby entitled to create its own nihilistic morality...fascism.  In terms of "undemocratic" I think I have sufficiently explained how democratic institutions can technically exist, yet cease to functionin in a truly democratic way.  Furthermore, as a result of our half century struggle with world communism, it is hard to deny, in light of events real and whispered, that with the development of a vast, ruthless, secret keeping national intelligence establishment which cultivates close ties with what General Eisenhower pointed out to be the most dangerous challenge to our democracy, the oft refered to "military industrial complex" (which, by the way, includes the petrol industry), there have existed and exist those within our nation for whom the defeat of communism and protecting of elitist corporate interests has became more important than maintenance of a free, sane, moderate, and pragmatic, democracy...They slandered their detractors for decades as "communists" or "pinkos", whether such labels were accurate or not, and, at least abroad, have shown time and again willingness to use any means possible, support any brutal dictator who would scream "anticommunism" and accept our money, to defeat their real or imagined enemies, who they do ever confuse with enemies of the American people as a whole...

In that we find ourselves living in a one party state, with a  mainstream media whose ownership is dangerously concentrated in the hands of a very powerful few (who share interest with those they should be watching), in that we find ourselves embroiled in a gigantic goose chase of a war (Iraq) into which it appears we were lied, and off which our economic elites are profitting with fat, no bid, overcharged contracts paid for by us schmuks, in that our liberties are imperiled by a vast code of potentially repressive laws hypocritically acronymed the "USA PATRIOT ACT", what kind of government do you think we are either moving toward, or at which we have already arrived?

OBVERSE DEMOCRATIC FASCISM

The cure?  VIRTUAL DEMOCRACY, GRASSROOTS ACTION AND HONEST, DECENT, BRAVE, INTELLIGENT LEADERS - LIKE GENERAL WES CLARK...AND YOU AND ME...

Next Post - America and Rome