[Peace-discuss] the F word (again)

[E. Wayne Johnson]

American fascism is one of a kind. Its economic system is neither free 
enterprise nor pure egalitarian socialism, but more akin to a buffed-up, 
modernized, globally dominant Mussolinian corporate state. Its 
militarism rivals and in many senses exceeds any of history's fascist 
regimes, in power, uninterrupted belligerence, and sheer size. Its 
presidency is the most revered and powerful Fuhrer in world history, 
despite and actually due to its democratic nature. America's racial 
nationalism is unusual but very real, combined with pretensions of 
anti-racism. Its police state enslaves and punishes, at home and abroad, 
in ways that would make Franco or Perón envious, even as it allows for a 
relatively wide range of social liberty.

When Keith Olbermann called Bush a fascist in 2008, the conservatives 
thought it seditious and threatening. When Glenn Beck began sounding the 
alarm in 2009 that America was moving toward fascism, the progressives 
thought it crazy and dangerous. Both of these statements were not 
hyperbole, however. If anything, antiwar lefties and populist rightists 
only know the half of it when they use the dread "F" word, since they 
fail to note how intimately much of their own favored agenda falls in 
line with what they despise...

When it comes to power -- the actual control the president has over 
resources and his capacity to destroy human life -- no other fascist 
leader has ever approached what is at the president's fingertips. No 
other political office has lasted so long with so much Caesarian 
prerogative. No other political position was ever credibly believed by 
so many to have the power to do so much good. In America, the president 
is a deity -- which, paradoxically, is why so many political opponents 
take it so personally when someone they dislike has the office. Some 
Americans don't want to see the greatness of their country tarnished by 
a perjurer like Clinton or a doofus like Bush. They might even question 
the officeholder's legitimacy, as with Obama. But this is because the 
office is so revered. The presidency itself is upheld as the commanding 
office of the nation, the secular savior of the world. It is the godhead 
of America's democratic omnipotence. It is a sacred position. The fact 
it is an elected office occupied by imperfect souls only bolsters its 
unparalleled grandeur. To say the Leader Principle isn't alive and well 
in this country is to define the concept too narrowly.

America's Unique Fascism
Anthony Gregory
http://lewrockwell.com/gregory/gregory239.html

....religion plays a fascinating part of American fascism, as both 
devout Christians and secular liberals see the state as a divine 
institution. For the fascist left the state is its secular God. For the 
fascist right the U.S. government is an arm of God's holy will. Fear of 
godlessness was key in the Cold War, just as fear of fundamentalist 
Muslims fuels the war on terror and fear of unusual Christian sects has 
led to their deprivation of rights at Waco and elsewhere.

The worst is seen in the U.S. treatment of foreigners, blown apart in 
war as if they are vermin. An important point here is the other fascist 
regimes have been historically discredited, and the modern incarnations 
of these nation-states don't speak with pride about their past. Modern 
Germany is not at all boastful of its National Socialist era. With 
America it is different. This is the state and statist culture that 
wiped out the Indians, kept blacks enslaved, dropped atoms bombs on 
Japanese civilians and put their American counterparts in concentration 
camps -- and yet these historical injustices, however much lamented 
today, do not bring into question the overall legitimacy of the American 
state that boasts an uninterrupted lineage of sovereignty that 
encompassed all these atrocities. The U.S. smacks of pride for its 
centuries of governance, despite the many millions enslaved and crushed 
under its boot. We should not be surprised that modern American 
political culture continues to treat foreigners as though they are 
subhuman. When Pakistani children die in U.S. drone wars, or Mexicans 
die by the tens of thousands purely because of U.S. drug policy, it is 
all seen as a price well worth paying -- if even it is acknowledged at 
all. The prevailing dichotomy that there are Americans, worthy of 
rights, and there are others, totally dispensable in achieving U.S. 
goals, is a construct easily befitting of national socialism.

American fascism has managed a wondrous trick, using old-fashioned 
racism as well as officially defined anti-racism to shore up its power. 
Washington's Civil Rights crusade as well as inhuman disregard for "the 
other" in perpetuating its totalitarian violence overseas reinforce each 
other in a most nefarious way, blinding people to the danger of mixing 
racial politics with total power no matter what the aim. Its wars abroad 
are always for equality, democracy, humanity. Its domestic state 
balloons with power to combat social strife. But from Wounded Knee to 
Guantánamo, the truly disenfranchised have another story to tell.
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