Fascism in America

[arisbe]

The Left has been denouncing American Fascism, indeed, denouncing America as Fascist, for so many years that we are deaf to the din of it. Lately, though, the warnings of an emerging Fascist mentality have been repeated from what some describe as the fringes of the Right, both the traditionalist (paleoconservative) and individualist (libertarian) wings. The American Conservative is seen as more moderate and mainstream, sceptical of big government, critical of the war, but willing to give both Republicans and Democrats the benefit of the doubt when they seem honest. It is therefore a milestone that even they are now insisting that we ought to take the threat very seriously indeed. Scott McConnell, a student of Fritz Stern, Columbia's great historian of the European Right, makes a sobering case, with the essential qualifications, in Hunger for Dictatorship: War to export democracy may wreck our own.

It is, I think, essential reading.

Comments

[lilburne.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure I'd use the f-word, but I have certainly been exposed to the popular attitudes the article describes. There are people who would probably form a natural constituency for a politician who wanted to lock up dissenters and start putting a real hurtin' on some foreigners.

President Bush is not the leader these folks are looking for. He's no Woody Wilson, signing laws making it a crime to criticize the federal government's war policies. Bush is no FDR or Earl Warren, seeking to banish citizens from their homes and intern them in prison camps based solely on their ancestry. He's no Winston Churchill, willing to use methods of warfare that kill lots of civilians.

If a politician arose today like Wilson, FDR, Warren or Churchill advocating the roundup and imprisonment of Arab-Americans and critics of the war, as well as vicious warmaking tactics, the politician could rely on a following. I don't know how successful (s)he'd be, but he'd certainly make a splash.

[arisbe.livejournal.com]

There are people like that in and around the administration, but I think (and hope) you're right -- Mr. Bush isn't one of them. And I think (and hope) McConnell is right, that the vast mass of Evanbelical Christians want nothing to do with that sort of thing.