The word fascism is overused, and historians use it incorrectly. It was Mussolini's, not Hitler's, system. The Latin word fasces refers to rods tied together and carried with an ax's blade, as pictured (h/t Wikipedia). The fasces was carried before Roman magistrates as a symbol of Roman power. Left-wing historians have ideological motivation to misuse the word. Mussolini was an unpleasant dictator, as were the emperors of Rome, but far worse crimes were committed under left-wing and other socialist systems, whether Russian, Chinese, German, or Cambodian, and whether before, during, or after World War II, than under Rome or Mussolini's fascism. The correct term of opprobrium is socialism, not fascism. The historical reason for the word fascism's overuse is that during World War II the American media wanted to downplay the identity of the name of the political and economic system of our chief enemy, Nazism, taken from the first two syllables of the German Nationalsozialismus, or national socialism, and of one of our allies, the Soviet Union. The name of Hitler's Nationalsozialismus was the same as Stalin's socialism in one country. The two phrases are translatable in the same way. Although Hitler emphasized antisemitism to a greater degree than did Stalin, Stalin's national socialism was antisemitic. American historians, who, like The New York Times, are in the left-wing propaganda-and-lying business, have continued fictitious use of the word fascism. Of course, public propaganda is a cornerstone of fascism, and both the American media and the American academic establishment have eagerly participated in American fascism.
Granted the word's widespread misuse, the dictionary defines fascism as follows:
a governmental system led by a dictator having complete power, forcibly suppressing opposition and criticism, regimenting all industry, commerce, etc., and emphasizing an aggressive nationalism and often racism.
The US has deemphasized racism. But in other ways it has become fascist. The president has increasing power; dissent is forcibly suppressed through recent laws like the Defense Authorization Act; industry is increasingly regimented, regulated, and subsidized; American nationalism has become increasingly violent and imperialistic.
As De Tocqueville predicted in 1836, the great danger to American freedom is tyranny of the majority. De Tocqueville could foresee an America of 150 million people (in 1830 America's population was 30 million), but he could not foresee electronic media. The potential for manipulation implicit in electronic media eliminates any difference between tyranny of the majority and European fascism.
Hitler practiced the big lie; the American media offers the big omission. Claiming that the Fed's political redistributive tactics are subtle technocratic matters, the media misleads the public into thinking that Wall Street's conversion of public resources through monetary policy, including TARP, $29 trillion in Fed toxic asset purchases, the tripling of the nation's money supply, and ongoing monetary expansion, are necessary and sophisticated policies mandated by ethereal theory to which only they are privy. Further examples of Wall Street's ongoing conversion of public assets include the 1980s silver bubble, the Mexican debt crisis, Long Term Capital Management, Salomon Brothers, the carry trade, and the Fed's subsidization of today's hedge funds. Economists, who are on the payroll, claim that they and the money center banks, who openly claim the need for subsidization, know what's best. According to these economic experts and bankers, George Soros and Warren Buffett must be subsidized. They then claim that their "conscience" impels them to favor reduction of "income inequality" by taxing middle class Americans and using the blood money to pay interest on treasury bonds used to finance the wages of unionized government workers who earn more than those taxed.
A failed, government-run education system facilitates American fascism. A recent report found the following:
Our nation's graduating high school class of 2011 had a 32 percent proficiency rate in math and a 31 percent proficiency rate in reading, leaving many to question whether schools are adequately preparing students...Although math performance levels among countries that ranked 23 to 31 aren't significantly different from that of the U. S., 22 countries outperform the U. S. in the number of students reaching math proficiency... While 42 percent of white students were identified as proficient in math, only 11 percent of African American students, 15 percent of Hispanic students, and 16 percent of Native Americans were proficient.
The dumb are easily manipulated. But even well-educated Americans have been drawn onto the fascist bandwagon. In particular, the manipulation has taken a partisan turn. In deemphasizing racism American fascism has removed the scapegoating that European tyrants have used to galvanize tyrannical democratic impulses in Europe. In its place is partisan hatred, which works like racism. Among the perpetrators are Rush Limbaugh, Fox News, and similar talk radio sources on the right, and The New York Times, MSNBC, and similar outlets on the left.
A recent example was in my local newspaper, The Kingston Freeman. A writer named Gary Weiss wrote a Op Ed that spews hate toward Ron Paul. Without evidencing knowledge of the facts, Weiss calls Paul a racist, but he does not discuss Paul's key issue: the Fed. Weiss is a writer who has studied Wall Street but is ignorant of Wall Street's dependence on the Fed. This is not surprising because he is a product of the American education system. (The Freeman published my letter in response to Weiss's article.) Similarly, a friend who, under Bush, claimed to favor civil liberties and oppose the Patriot Act, continues to support Obama despite his signing the Defense Authorization Act. Defying logic, he blames Bush. He showed me an article in The New York Times that claims that Obama's economic policies, I imagine including Obama's health care and cap and trade proposals, are due to Bush. In other words, the partisan media, like the Nazi propaganda agencies, toss logic to the winds. Much as the German media blamed Jews for a bad economy, The New York Times says that Barack Obama's massive transfers of wealth to Wall Street are George Bush's fault. Of course, Rush Limbaugh says that the Republicans' failure to cut government was the Democrats' fault. Fascists do not reason.
American fascism is likely to accelerate. With his Defense Authorization Act in place, Obama now can declare martial law. Americans face economic decline that directly results from the Federal Reserve Bank's mismanagement of the nation's resources, over-expansion of the money supply, concomitant transfer of wealth (through monetary expansion) to privileged elites, especially Wall Street, real estate interests, and government beneficiaries, and the gutting of the American manufacturing base through a combination of low interest rates and global subsidization of the dollar. American consumers have benefited at the expense of de-masculinization of the work force and the exit of manufacturing jobs.
The shrill, fascistic partisanship in the American media, to include Fox and The Freeman, Limbaugh and Matthews, The Times and The Wall Street Journal, suggests the beginnings of an irrational, potentially violent response to declining wealth (which has been transferred to Wall Street) and economic opportunity. The final transition to an American dictatorship may well occur within our lifetimes.
