More Strong Talk from Chris Hedges
by: Dave Belden on March 31st, 2010 | 12 Comments »
The quite appropriate photo used on AlterNet to illustrate Hegdes' post. Photo Credit: cometstarmoon
Hedges’ latest is called “Is American Yearning for Fascism?” What I want to ask you, our readers, is: is this country really psychologically and politically similar enough to Germany in the 1920s, which is his main comparison, to be seriously in danger of fascism? As someone raised outside the U.S. who has still lived longer outside it than in, I am more impressed by how cussedly libertarian so many Americans are, how much the love of guns is allied to a “leave me alone” attitude. I know we are all prone to obedience and are more easily seduced by authority than we would like to think, but the American libertarian attitude seems very ill suited to fascist movements of the kind that take over the state and run it. Am I wrong?
Here’s what Hedges writes about current “movements” — mostly unnamed in this post though he names the Oath Keepers, Citizens United, Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin:
These movements are not yet full-blown fascist movements. They do not openly call for the extermination of ethnic or religious groups. They do not openly advocate violence. But, as I was told by Fritz Stern, a scholar of fascism who has written about the origins of Nazism, “In Germany there was a yearning for fascism before fascism was invented.” It is the yearning that we now see, and it is dangerous. If we do not immediately reincorporate the unemployed and the poor back into the economy, giving them jobs and relief from crippling debt, then the nascent racism and violence that are leaping up around the edges of American society will become a full-blown conflagration.
Left unchecked, the hatred for radical Islam will transform itself into a hatred for Muslims. The hatred for undocumented workers will become a hatred for Mexicans and Central Americans. The hatred for those not defined by this largely white movement as American patriots will become a hatred for African-Americans. The hatred for liberals will morph into a hatred for all democratic institutions, from universities to government agencies to the press. Our continued impotence and cowardice, our refusal to articulate this anger and stand up in open defiance to the Democrats and the Republicans, will see us swept aside for an age of terror and blood.
When I read Hedges’ denunciations of the Democrats and the educated, employed, liberal masses who vote for them, I have a lot of agreement–the Democrats and we the voters are being feeble, seduced by the system, overawed by the supposed difficulties of changing it radically, (seduced by authority and by the daily decisions of how to get or keep a job, afford medical treatment, get our kids intact to adulthood etc) and I do think that if we don’t act radically to create a caring and an ecologically sane society we will reap a whirlwind. But I also have a good number of questions. Mainly, what kind of whirlwind? Domestic terrorism, crackdown, more intrusive and authoritarian government but not fascism? Or is Hedges right?
How do we really understand America today? It feels like a new situation. The lack of socialist, progressive energy today is remarkable, and I still don’t feel I understand it. But I have heard so much rhetoric in my life about the coming end of capitalism, and the coming rise of fascism in America, I am skeptical of Hedges’ prognostications. I don’t feel I understand movements in general today. I don’t feel fascism in the air. I feel anger, despair, burnout, disappointment, fear, but it doesn’t feel like it is translating into widespread fascism. It feels more like we will muddle along until major catastrophes, beyond what we have seen yet, happen. A bigger economic collapse, or a bigger version of the drowning of New Orleans that is indubitably tied to global warming, or maybe more major domestic teorrism.
But what do I know? I do know that I am working hard at Tikkun, magazine and blog, but it is a job with a salary; I’m one of the lucky ones, but I am so exhausted from it I don’t have much left over for starting or participating in movements beyond my immediate job description (e.g., I’m not able to participate in the local efforts to get a chapter of the Network of Spiritual Progressives going, outside of my magazine work). I can barely keep myself spiritually balanced and adequately supplied with healthy energy for job, family, friends, and church.
I am one of the people Hedges excoriates: inadequately active in promoting a movement that can change America; and unconvinced that he is right about the practical possibilities inherent in the Greens or any other third party. I am more in the camp of thinking that the whole liberal middle and upper class he is blaming are themselves on a path, that their disillusion with liberal politics is in process, that further shocks will swing them, but also that it is not just fear but love that has to move them… But I can’t continue writing along this line (even though leaving it there, I may sound naive and ridiculous) because I have to get to the office or there won’t a May/June print issue of Tikkun! But that’s where I feel I am. If I really agreed that we were on the brink of a fascist takeover of the state, would I be acting differently? What about you?
I read Hedges without immediately dismissing him because what happened in Germany seemed as unlikely before Hitler as it seems for the US today. The historical conditions are not at all similar. However, the approximation under the Patriot Act and G.W. Bush, and more recently the Citizens United decision by SCOTUS gives me pause.
Are Americans as a people any less susceptible than were the Germans to totalitarianism? Yes, but just barely. Just look at how successful the moneyed elite is to increases in its control at the expense of the working class. Their taxes have not been lower in nearly a century. How far will they go to perpetuate their privileges? As far as necessary. Since fascism benefits the rich beyond all others, it is reasonable to expect their ferocious battle to use corporate privilege to keep control will continue. If they can seemingly continue to demonstrate that it benefits ‘good’ Americans, their power grows.
So long as Americans worship success, defined as financial independence, the threat from fascism is real. I see little prospect of change in that belief, especially since it is now also the belief of American labor. Opposition from the unsuccessful gets ignored. Opposition from hard working Americans is necessary.
The possibility of fascism is real, although I don’t believe imminent. But all concerned ought be vigilent in monitoring events. One modest suggestion would be for our political historians to carefully define what fascism is and is not. It’s particularly ironic that many of the very radical right-winf forces that look most like they could morph into true fascism use the word to accuse Obama and other progressives!
Dave, I don;t know why you waste so much angst over this blowhard Hedges. He is a provocateur, but worse, he is a ninny.
Short version: The ugliness America is going through now is rooted deep in american history–a history that has had its share of atrocities, but is decidedly non fascist, and likely anti-fascist. It’s the latest round of the white racist backlash against PROGRESS, which is what we are ever so tenuously trending towards. We saw it in the 60s, with the bombing of children in a Birmingham church, we saw it in the north, with the ugly violence against busing in Boston, we saw it of course throughout the 20th century, as the civil rights movement, and support for it, grew. Thousands of examples. And now, we are perhaps in some late stages, as the browning of America looms within the lifetimes of many Americans. Dave–the reactionaries LOST this last round. They lost in 2008. Our progress isn’t perfect, and many of us on the left wish it could look the way we want–single payer, end the wars immediately, radical financial reform (all of which would probably spur an even nastier backlash from the white/right. Grow up Hedges. Make a contribution. Inflammatory pseudo-radical rhetoric with not even an iota of grounding in the realities of American history is so…20th Century!
One sure difference – Hitler put people back to work (making weapons) after the economy collapsed. I mean COLLAPSED, not just in a bad recession.
We have 17.5% unemployed; Germany had nearly everybody unemployed, plus the Deutschemark was worthless, so people could not even buy bread to eat.
Germany had been defeated in WWI, but since the war was not fought in Germany, few Germans actually believed that they had lost. After all, in 1914 they were an industrial powerhouse – they made more steel and ships that Britain did. So it was easy for a demagogue to claim that they had been “sold out” by (fill in the gap here) the Jews, the liberals, the intellectuals, etc.
We are not where the Germans were in 1933.
re Hedges and Fascism
The missing element is a definition of fascism: how about this: economic control by the government while title remains formally in the hands of citizens, and this system is run in the name of national greatness.
Does our new health care system sound like fascism?
Some fascist regimes have been warlike, and others, such as Portugal and Spain, were satisfied with internal control.
Does our current form of government sound like this?
I sense a confusion between a 1930ish fascism (replete with genocidal yearnings) and a good-old-fashioned dictatorship preferably with a strong religious tone. Perhaps something like what we read about in Iran right now. We have the Christian zealots and we have yearning for simplistic answers by political zealots on board. All we need is more, bigger troubles and …… I see the people of color in our land as a real counter force to all this.
I think that is more likely in our multi-ethnic land than a repeat of Germany.
I’d like to hear you expand on that–
James Madison said, “I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.”
It is more likely that right wing extremist violence will be forcefully crushed by the government than not.
Our problem is not like that of Germany’s before Hitler. Rather, it is the government merged with corporate interests that is the danger right now. We won’t see a major ideologue emerge from the people unless the government/corporate interests choose this and have that person under their control.
What you are more likely to see is a slow progression (as Madison states) which will take more with one hand and give some (but much less) with the other. By the time the quantity of loss is so much greater than the quantity of gain (for citizens) we will have become inured to the state of affairs. So much smarter than a coup. Call it creeping fascism if you like, but a form of fascism it is.
The Bush/Cheney administration brought us to the brink of fascism but, at this point, I see America at a crossroad. I’m not sure where we’re heading.
After reading how the Federal Reserve initiated a secret bailout of Bear Stearns and also took on billions of dollars worth of AIG securities (even before a government bailout), I am asking myself, “Who runs this government?” Has corporate power grown so powerful that it is another branch of government?Who authorizes secret bailouts in a so-called democracy? This sort of thing happens when a small, powerful group of people are the real power behind the curtain. Is this not a characteristic of fascism?
Are not rampant greed and corruption also characteristics of fascism? How about the sort of propaganda, passing as news, to which we are subjected on a daily basis? What about military imperialism and suppression of labor?
So, yes, depending on one’s definition of fascism, I see some characteristics of fascism but try to remain hopeful that some of the positive things that are happening will counter my fears. Then, again, is it wishful thinking? As I said before, I don’t know where we’re headed.
The new health care bill at its core has exactly the concept that Hitler instituted in September 1939–defining
some lives as not worth of being lived, in order to cut costs. To carry this out, Hitler appointed a committee of “experts,” who ruled on who should live and who should die. Thousands of retarded, mentally ill, and chronically ill were killed–both old and young–in the name of saving money. Yet, many oblivious Democrats today delude themselves that this is a good bill, a “first step.” Yes, a first step down the slippery slope to the death camps. Leo Alexander, who interviewed the Nazi doctors at the Nuremberg Trials, wrote (in the New England Journal of Medicine) about the “small beginnings” of the German medical profession’s collaboration in the Nazi horrors. That’s exactly what we have here.
Meanwhile, the same administration that is imposing austerity on the majority of the nation’s citizens poured trillions of dollars into bailing out the gamblers and speculators on Wall Street.
The solution in this time of worldwide financial collapse is to do what FDR did in the 1930s–rapidly putting millions to work and rebuilding the nation’s industry, while clamping down on Wall Street. Lyndon LaRouche
has put forward a specific FDR plan for today, including a global Glass-Steagall to throw out the speculators’ debt and massive investment in infrastructure building. You can read about it here: http://www.larouchepac.com/credit Without this approach, we indeed face fascism and worse–a new dark age.
The Tikkun Daily Blog is about the last place I expected to find a disciple of Lyndon LaRouche. It’s actually good to know there’s an open door. I recently saw the great “All the King’s Men” again and I just thought about how Lyndon LaRouche reminded me of Willie Stark, who was based on Hughie Long. Life imitating Art, imitating Life.
Dave Belden writes a compelling aside to Chris Hedges article concerning the possible fascist trend in US government’s party system and general demeanor.
I am surprised that none here mentions the Special relationship of the US to Israel. This specialness is derived from the persecutions Jews met at the hands of Hitlers Gestapos and henchmen, but more pertinently the way in which they were demonised and ridiculed in their enclaves in German Poland Russia and elsewhere as plotters and schemers against Russia Germany and Poland, a kind of scape goat for the ills of nations that took it on the chin more so than any other people, or so it is believed..
Naomi Wolf spoke some years back at great length of the signs of fascist onset in national persona’s and did mention several gripping comparisons which provoke food for though for Americans looking back at Germany.
What is missing in this thread is a discussion of 911, the patriot act, Wurmser, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld and Cheney and also Richard Perle, Danny Ayalon, CIA chief Hayden, Political broker Beck, and their organised front for the Koch Bros and Rupert Murdock, with the question in mind, what is this brand of libertarian and why is it emerging now, in a quasi political vacuum, before Obama’s legacy cements itself in US history, My point and in league with Hedges reasoning is this, Blow back and denigration of enemies go hand in glove in political arenas, Hitler emasculated Jews and they found cover in many places protected by the US France even Modern Germany and the Israeli nation, but the results of such a protective love for Jews have wrought some ugly outcomes for Muslims, and this is not a fantasy or overblown rant against Zionism, it is a fact of death in Iraq For Afghanistan India and Somalia, there IS a full scale war, pronounced by Eric Prince and many in the above cadres of US prominent Jewry that is calling this war against terrorism, but forgetting that it is state sponsored terrorism that caused it, perpetrated by the USA and friends of Israel as a protection for Israel and for the USA’s now flagging economy.
With the intelligent comments here, why is it missed that the US pays for the destruction of Gaza and the marginalization of the West Bank, for the stalling of peace talks and the eradication by slow burn of Palestinians from East Jerusalem. If Israel exhibits signs of social racism based on political religious practices and the US France and Germany are enduring current hate crimes against Muslims, France even banning religion’s garbs on women, this is denigration of a certain religion, an ethnic group, persecution of that group and wars that make the statement that the US will kill anyone threatening their national security without trial, jury, Habeus corpus right or representation by an attorney, Naomi Wolf cited each of these tenets of pre fascism, but she missed one important aspect of this shift in US affinity, Jews, right wing and zionist extremists support much of not all of these tenets of political dogma.
This is not to say that the US circumstance is the fault or responsibility of Jews, but top say that when certain indicators are missed , it is out of a lack of self inspection, looking outward for signs of fascist leanings and not looking inside ones own heart.
It is wise to be as 20/20 and with wide peripheral vision at this troublesome US falling from grace and seek the reasons, people, ideology and political arenas which encompass the current complexion of US politics and wars.
The US and Israel threaten war with Iran because Iran is trying to be as they are holders of nuclear weapons, the attitude of US and Israeli zionists is that they are trustworthy to use such weapons judiciously and Iran is not, due to Iran’s posture towards Israeli settlements and terroristic wars against Lebanon, now for many years with the US as accomplice or perhaps steering committee and weapons provider.
It is love for self and respect for the travails of Israel that sets this mind of omission of certain indicators in Jewish and American liberal thinkers. It is difficult to pin evil on support for beleaguered Jews, especially after they suffered so in the past, but today, Jews suffer not nearly as Arabs, Persians and Iraqs do, after many years of sanctions, debilitating public denunciations and threats and wars set in motion by the US CIA in Latin America, East and West Asia, the Middle east, Indonesia, North Africa and south Africa, by colonialist expansions of what has re assembled itself as the New World Order and few Arabs and Persians are included in this newest US tome of status stated as the US main goal for this century, Full spectrum dominance via warring against what we call terrorism, but whom are known as Islamic nations who seek to be dealt with fairly and honestly but are maligned, divided and conquered by devious means, much of it emanating for Israeli intel and transcribed as US policy.
We must be thorough in disseminating the subtleties of pre fascism when it is known that these wars are admittedly fought in deception and with deceptive press, means and ends, What then Is Zionism withholding from the good folks who love Israel and are true friends of Jews??? Good question, let us resolve to remove our blinders and find the correct answers, before we slip away into oblivious stupors of self adulation. We are in the deepest woods, looking to find a way out, and we have not found, as yet the narrow path to salvation.