Bertram Gross wrote a book in the early 1980s called Friendly Fascism; in it, the professor outlined how fascism could come to power in the United States. Fascism is a word we never see anymore, replaced by terms like "ultraconservative" or "extreme right-wing" or "ultranationalist" -- but "fascist" is a forbidden word, anymore (although "neo-fascist" sometimes appears to describe fringe hate groups). It is only used to reference classical fascism -- the kind everybody thinks of when you say "fascism" -- Italian Fascists, the Nazis, uniforms, mass rallies, World War II.
The popular wisdom is that fascism was killed with World War II -- that it is a bankrupt and dead ideology, a relic of the past. But this is a very dangerous and misguided belief, for fascism still lives as an idea, and has evolved for the last 60 years after the collapse of classical fascism in World War II.
The following sections are excerpted from Friendly Fascism. This long book is dated in some respects, and reflects an Old Left sensibility, but it was ahead of its time as well. I can't possibly do it justice, so I'm just adapting a comparison between classical fascism and so-called "friendly fascism" to show how the idea can and has evolved. If you think on these points, you can find many examples of them in practice in our society.
An immediate -- and all too human -- reaction among Americans, and friends of America, is to deny the possibility. In other countries it might happen -- but not here. In the Communist world [sic], dictatorships of the proletariat or the Party ... Military juntas in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Nigeria, and many other places ... Other dictatorial styles in India, Pakistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the Philippines ... But nothing like this in the prosperous, enlightened nations of Western civilization and the Judeo-Christian tradition. Above all, not in the United States of America, not in the land of the free and the home of the brave....
But why not? Why is it impossible?
Many fo the arguments purporting to demonstrate impossibility actually demonstrate little more than an unwillingness to "think the unthinkable." Some people try to protect their sensibilities behind a tangle of terminological disputation. The word "fascism," they say, is an emotion-laden term of abuse, as though the brutal, inhuman realities beyhind other terms -- whether "manipulatory authoritarianism," "bureaucratic collectivism," or "military junta" -- do not also evoke deep human emotions. Some people argue that the future threat in America is socialist collectivism, not fascism, implying that those who detect a fascist danger are spreading leftist propaganda for the purpose of bringin on a different form of despotism. Other merely react to exaggerated claims that fascism is already here or is inevitable.
Nonetheless, there are at least three serious arguments used by those who think that it could not happen here.
One of the most subtle arguments is "American capitalism does not need fascism."
On this point, let me quote from Corliss Lamont, who grew up as a member of one of the families most closely associated with the Morgans and other titans of American banking:
A similar escape clause has been carved out by Theodore Draper. In a scholarly critique of an earlier article of mine on the subject, he added as an afterthought that he did not intend to give "assurances that we will not follow the German pattern of history into some form of fascism." And then he added that although the Republic is not "immediately (my italics) in danger, if worse comes to worse, we may yet get some form of fascism."
A more widespread argument is "American democracy is too strong."
It is true, of course, that old-fashioned fascism never took root in a country with a solid tradition and history of constitutional democracy. The kind of democracy that grew up in both England and the United States was too much of a barrier to the Oswald Mosleys, the Huey Longs, and the Father Coughlins of a past generation. Even in France, the rise of the French fascists under Pétain occurred only after military conquest by the Nazis.
But this kind of argument boils down to nothing less than the identification of obstacles. It provides no evidence to suggest that these obstacles are immovable objects that cannot be overcome or circumvented in the future.
[a4a: The 2000 Supreme Court Presidential "selection" comes to mind.]
A third argument is that "While possible, a new form of fascism is too unlikely to be taken seriously."
I see this view as a tribute that blindness pays to vision. It is merely a sophisticated way of conceding possibility while justifying inaction. The outside chance, after all, rarely deserves to be a focus of continuing attention. In terms of its implications, therefore, "unlikely" may be the equivalent of either "impossible" or "so what?"
...There are two natural reactions in the face of the difficulties of prevention. One is to push the possibility into the background by mathematically based arguments that the statistical probability is very low. The other is to exaggerate both the horror and the probability of the calamities to be avoided, justifying such exaggeration on the grounds that it alone can move people to action.
I cannot accept either ... I prefer to deal with preventive action directly.
(pg. 383)
After serving two terms as president, Jefferson explained.... "Merchants have no country. The mere spot they stand on does not constitute so strong an attachment as that from which they draw their gains."
...Some years ago, Francis W. Coker of Yale University put his finger on the divisive and exclusive patriots who "insist that the country must always be set above the rest of the world" and "in the name of patriotism conduct a virulent propaganda against economic and political measures of which they disapprove," including the admission of "undesirable" foreigners but also the free expression of dissident views in schools, churches, or the media. In his Militarism, USA, a sober critique based on years of experience in the U.S. Marine Corps, Colonel James A. Donovan identifies the dangerous patriot: "the one who drifts into chauvinism and exhibits blind enthusiasm for military actions. He is a defender of militarism and its ideals of war and glory. Chauvinism is a proud and bellicose form of patriotism ... which identifies numerous enemies who can only be dealt with through military power and which equates the national honor with military victory."
(pg. 386) I came to maturity hating the wrongdoers of classic fascism. They were truly hateful. I cannot say that I hate the racists, chauvinists, sexists, polluters, interventionists, price fixers, labor-haters, academic frauds, false patriots, and corporate criminals and corrupters who are taking us down the paths toward friendly fascism. Hatred is their game. They hate people at home and abroad, and I suspect that many of them hate themselves. They are as much the victims as the beneficiaries of a system that needs some reconstructing. They need compassion. They also need their comeuppance. They must be fought in the factories and the fields, in the offices and the supermarkets, in the courts and the legislatures, at the ballot boxes, in the classrooms, on the picket lines, in the press and one the air waves. They must be fought with every nonviolent and nonwarlike means that the ingenuity of man, woman, or child can devise.
CF: Negative sanctions through ruthless, widespread, and high-cost terror; direct action against targeted scapegoats.
FF: Direct terror applied through low-level violence and professionalized, low-cost escalation, with indirect terror through ethnic conflicts, multiple scapegoats, and organized disorder.
CF: Widespread benefits through more jobs, stabilized prices, domestic spoils, foreign booty, and upward mobility for the most faithful.
FF: Rationed rewards of power and money for elites, extended professionalism, accelerated consumerism for some, and social services conditional on the recipients' good behavior.
CF: Internal viability based on sustained, frantic, and eventually self-destructive expansion.
FF: Internal viability based on careful expansion, system-strengthening reforms, multilevel co-optation, and mass apathy.
[a4a: The following were created in the Nixon years, as a way of dealing with urban riots, esp. in black neighborhoods. They are very reminiscent with what is happening now.]
In reviewing the flowering of these various methods in the past, Richard Harris points up an interesting paradox. On the one hand, the popular justification for these measures has been to maintain law and order by punitive action against criminals and dissidents. In doing so, on the other hand, officials of the Justice Department themselves flagrantly violated many laws of due process. The paradox may be resolved, Harris points out, by retroactive legislation of the illegal: "The danger today is not only that the Constitution will continue to be violated by the Government, as it has been repeatedly in the past couple of years, but that the present Administration will rewrite the essential protections contained in that document, with the consent of the governed, and the agreement of Congress and the Supreme Court, in the name of private and public security."
Return to Anarchy for Anybody