I recently began a project to examine why it is that people seem to be so susceptible to crazy conspiracy theories, fear-mongering tactics, and mis-directions of attention from finding real solutions to problems that we all face as human beings on this planet. I began this search when I was shocked to find out that many people adhere to a set of conspiracy theories that place the blame for all human suffering in the hands of an international, powerful, secret society that is out to rule the world through international financial organizations, think tanks, and the United Nations, who secretly run all the big multi-national corporations and their puppet governments. They believe that, as part of their plot, this New World Order is working to limit the amount of human beings on the planet to under 500,000,000 through all kinds of disasters, military actions, and world events that they secretly engineer. They see signs of this plot everywhere they look, and point to the 9/11 conspiracy as one of the crowning achievements of the secret cabal.
The scariest part of all this is that while these schemes are being propagated and bought into by so many people, problems that we could be solving by coming together and working toward positive change in the world are not being addressed at all. What a sad state of affairs, indeed. Mis-diagnosing the disease can be as bad or worse than just ignoring it. And while these particular conspiracy theories that are flying around this New World Order concept have arisen out of certain misunderstandings, ignorance, suspicions, and fears, they are working in favor of the real culprits of such disasters as the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001 by letting them off the hook for the horrible crimes that they committed that day. Our government's actions and inactions and their secrecy about the the affair feed into the conspiracy theories, but they also leave open the possibility that there are entirely different conspiracies at hand, such as the one where the government is actually allowing the impression to spread that they themselves secretly orchestrated the disasters at the bidding of their supposed international overlords, in order to hide the extent of their ineptitude, or the Bush family's true secretive connections to the Bin Laden family, or the CIA connections to the mysterious drug smuggling airplanes that operate out of the same little airport in Venice, Florida where Mohammad Atta and others were flight training, or... My point is that speculation and unsubstantiated rumors could lead almost anywhere, and they serve to benefit people in ways that are never considered when calmer thinking fails to prevail.
Conspiracies always arise when secrecy occurs. The New World Order conspiracy has its roots in secretive societies, such as the Freemasons, the Knights of Columbus, Skull and Bones, and allegedly still active Bavarian Illuminati, a group that did exist during the Enlightenment, but of which there is no verifiable evidence of its survival into the present. (When it comes to “verifiable evidence,” I have found that the believers tend to take any reports by the proponents of these theories at face value, and do not dig any deeper. When I researched some of the 9/11 claims, the references given only lead in circles among the same group of proponents.) What purpose does secrecy serve, anyway? Well, some may be for the purpose of exclusivity, a society to gather the “worthy” together in solidarity and to keep “undesirables” out. Sometimes, groups hoard knowledge so that they can exert power over others by impressing them, (sacred knowledge, magical formulas, special esoteric meanings), or to subjugate them (slaves in the United States were banned from learning to read, and women throughout history have also been excluded), or to entice (Scientologists make their members pay to learn their secrets and rise up in the hierarchy). Other times, of course, secrecy is carried out to hide horrible deeds, truths that might be undermining someone's honesty, a form of lying. And there are military and “trade” secrets, information that will cause the enemy or competitors to know what one is up to. But whether the secrecy is as benign as a group of kids having a secret club or as necessary as military secrecy, the result is that those who are not privy to the secrets feel alienated and rejected, or betrayed, and will rightly harbor suspicions, cynicism, and even fear about what may be plotted behind closed doors.
That is why democracy is dependent upon truthfulness, information, and transparency by its elected and appointed officials, as well as the candidates running for office. This is essential to the workings of a democratic government. A government that loses these ingredients is no longer a democracy, a government by the people. If the representatives of the people are allowed to function under a veil of secrecy, then that is an invitation to lie, cheat, and steal, and even if they do not engage in such activities, their veil of secrecy solicits suspicions that they might very well be. These representative officials cannot be handed these invitations, for they in fact constitute the seeds of despotism. It's very simple, really. The definition of “democracy” is “rule by the people.” So if the people are lied to, kept secrets from, cheated out of fair elections, denied real access to or ignored by their representatives, and otherwise kept out of the democratic process, then democracy no longer exists. What does exist, I am not sure – a shell of a democracy, a failed democracy...?
In the case of our current government, under the murky leadership of the Bush Administration, but also with the entrenched system of lobbyists and campaign financing that gives real access only to the very wealthy, one wonders what would be the best way to describe what exists instead of democracy. Plutocracy, or oligarchy would seem to apply when considering who has access to our lawmakers and executives. However, dictatorship more accurately applies to the Bush administration's secretive expansions of executive power, refusal to submit to oversight, and attempts to create One Party Rule through political control of the legislative branch and the illegal politicization of the judiciary branch, collectively known as the Unitary Executive Theory. But if we are searching for the most accurate diagnosis of this diseased democracy, we must continue to isolate and identify overlooked symptoms, to draw out those that may be latent, to consider further diseases that may seem improbable, yet because of the infinite complexity of the human animal and the exponentially more complex nature of the animal's system of governing, may turn out to be the true hidden pathology. Could we be falling prey to tyranny? In light of the Christian Right's movements to gain power, could symptoms of theocracy be a part of the affliction? Or, because of the way that our Supreme Court appointed George W. Bush as president instead of allowing all of the votes to be counted, plus the insistence on the use of secretive and untrustworthy voting machines, our government could be described as an autocracy. Or is some combination of undemocratic symptoms, corporate influence, and reactionary politics indicative of nothing short of the latest mutation of fascism?
Let us look at the stripped down, core meanings of these terms. “Plutocracy” is government by the wealthy, while “oligarchy” indicates the idea that the wealthy few exercise control from the shadows, as the “power behind the throne.” “Theocracy” denotes a state-sponsored religion. The term, “autocracy” covers many different incarnations of government by a self-appointed leader. One of those is “despotism,” the concentration of absolute power into the hands of a very few, usually understood to be a single individual. But although the term has come to denote cruelty and abuse of power, despots have not always been characterized as such. The original usage dates back to the ancient Egyptian Pharaohs. The meanings of the words, “dictator” and “tyrant” have similarly change their connotations since their ancient origins.
The term “dictator” was an invention of the Roman Republic, as strong leaders who were nominated to rule with absolute authority in times of crisis, to perform specific “extraordinary tasks,” as both chief executive and supreme military commander, but with a limited time frame of six months. For over 400 years, the Roman dictators who were appointed carried out their missions and then relinquished the authority granted them, until Lucius Cornelius Sulla Felix decided that the Republic was in danger from within, as the Social War had broken out pitting the Italian provincials, who felt that, if Rome deemed to tax them and call them to arms, then they wanted to have representatives in the government, against the Roman aristocracy, which composed the Roman Senate. In 81 BC, after Sulla had broken precedent by marching his army on Rome itself to reestablish his command authority, precedent was again broken when he was appointed by the Senate as “dictator for the making of laws and for the settling of the constitution” with no limit set to his term in office. He proceeded to execute perceived enemies of the state, confiscate their wealth, ban their descendants from future political office, and otherwise strengthen the aristocracy in the Senate. But even he voluntarily abdicated the dictatorship after one year. The new precedent had been set, though, and Gaius Julius Caesar subsequently resurrected the dictatorship, abused its powers, and was eventually appointed to the position of “dictator in perpetuity,” which soon led to the end of the Republican system of government and forever maligned the term dictator. Now, it is understood to mean an all-powerful, absolutely unchecked state leader.
The term “tyrant” also has changed in connotation through time. The earliest Greek term referred to a ruler who gained power not through “legitimate” transfer within the monarchy or aristocracy, but by usurpation, supported by popular or factional uprisings and maintained by the use of mercenaries, until they or their heirs became unpopular because of abuses of power and the next coup occurred. Who knew that the genesis of such a despised expression was actually the result of early class struggles between aristocrats and the rest of the population? Even before true democracy was established in Athens, its seeds could be noted in such institutions as the city-state's first written constitution by Draco, whose harsh laws elicited the term “draconian;” its subsequent reform by Solon, who tried to calm social upheavals and the uncertainty of the constant factional power struggles through legislation; the rotating citizen councils that were the norm throughout all of the city-states of ancient Greece, who were charged with running the affairs of the cities, albeit from among the privileged aristocracy. And the uprisings themselves served as a kind of democratic check on the power of the rulers, an incentive to not stray too far from a populist agenda. The usage of the term “tyrant” as harsh, cruel, and having absolute power only came to be after reforms to the political system in Athens began to truly resemble democracy, after Aristogeiton and Harmodius murdered Hipparchus, who, along with his brother, had inherited power after the death of their father, a well-liked tyrant, but who then took their positions for granted and became progressively more and more oppressive and corrupt. The story of the birth of democracy is a juicy one, in fact, as the tale includes pederasty, spurned sexual advances, and the revengeful humiliation of an aristocratic family by publicly accusing the daughter of not being a virgin. The male couple, Aristogeiton and Harmodius, were killed after the murder by the remaining brother, but they became known as the Tyrannicides, iconic symbols of Athenian democracy. So much history, so little of it taught in school, especially when it involves homosexual love triangles. But it is interesting to me that the history of the term, “tyranny,” shows that it did not exclude democratic ideas. Modern democracy, on the other hand, as connoted by the term, “tyranny of the majority,” cannot be allowed to let majority rule fail to respect the rights and privileges of its minority members, a notion that is all but forgotten by those who would let democracy slip into fascism when our president declares, “You're either with us or against us,” an undemocratic slogan for the silencing of dissent.
The struggle to achieve good governance and strong nations has always involved class divisions. In the years following WWI, the Italians, demoralized by the high costs of a war that most Italians had not wanted to engage in, reacted to the great political and economic unrest by inventing a new way to unite themselves with the promise to eliminate classes altogether. By this time, western civilization had experimented with different government and economic structures, to varying effects, but all were faltering during the economic downturn that followed the Great War. Socialist and communist movements were moving workers to join forces against the capitalists and aristocracies as they became more and more aware that worlds' wealth was concentrated in the hands of the few economic elites. The radicals of the Marxist, Leninist, Bolshevik movements had decided that international worker solidarity, violent revolution, and the redistribution of wealth could be the only path to social equality. But in Italy, a romantic movement towards revival of the Roman Empire that promise to eliminate class divisions though national unity took hold. The inventors of Italian Fascism, including Benito Mussolini himself, had toyed with socialism in their youths, but had rejected as a failure its core tenet of state or collective ownership of all economic vehicles. They intended to achieve a classless society not through redistribution, nor through the elimination of private capital, but by bringing all the classes, with their different strengths, together as one national system, unified in service to this new, idealized, mightier Roman Empire. Rather than the class war and internationalism that they associated with communism, their revolutionary rhetoric spoke of workers' rights and strong unions as the backbone for the centralized, state-run economy that would give the same kind of respect to the workers as was given to bosses and managers and executives. Italy was to be an integrated, self-sufficient, corporate economy based on class collaboration and a strong and ruthless national leader, capable of instituting discipline and direction, of sweeping away all previous models of social reform, namely socialism, liberalism, and democracy, of purging all disorder and dissent. At least that is what they promised in the early stages, when they were amassing their popular support.
All of these terms I am investigating are complicated and confusing. That is why they require investigating. None is more confounding, though, than “fascism,” as even Mussolini changed his mind about its core principles as time went on, and additionally, because the Italian model was never repeated in its original form, but was subsequently borrowed from by a variety of regimes, such as the Nazis, the Spanish Nationalists, the Romanian nationalist Iron Guard, the Belgian Catholic-corporatist Rexists, the Croatian nationalist UstaĊĦa, and a host of others, each with their own agendas and emphasis on different aspects. Because of the complicated nature of this insipid beast, and the subsequent tendency for different factions to fling accusations of “fascism” around in attempts to vilify each other's ideologies, an exact definition has been hard to pin down. What I will do here, then, is look at the main characteristics that are associated with fascism, and then parse out the elements that lie at its core. Associated characteristics are totalitarianism, militarism, fundamentalism, populism, use of deceptions such as conspiracy theories and propaganda, hyper-nationalism, the opportunistic tendency to take advantage of times of crisis, collaboration across classes, and corporatism.
“Totalitarianism” is yet another scary term that conjures up the specter of an all-powerful, despotic, dictatorial tyrant. However, the authoritarian, or all powerful, leaders of totalitarian states actually understand their power not to be an end in itself, but to be in service to the state. Because of the need for the total and unquestioning loyalty of all members of society, they often create an inflated, heroic cult of personality, as the personification of the state itself and its ability to transform peoples' lives through the “revolutionary” transformation from the darkness of their individual selves to the light of the united whole. The state goes to great lengths to subordinate and control all of its elements, from its politics to its economics to its industry to its values to its artistic and athletic endeavors to its individual identities, that is, the totality of all of its parts, to the higher purpose of the state's glory. This is a system that depends on the use of patriotism, propaganda, total control of the media and the education system, secret police and citizen spies, and heavy handed violence to ensure unity and silence dissent. What totalitarianism is not is the violent rise to power of an individual, for the sake of greed or power as an end in itself, in a nation or region that lacks social structure and infrastructure, in developing nations that exist in a brutal state of poverty, want, and sustained chaos, where soldiers can be conscripted out of sheer desperation, and endless, factional battles for control of resources, power, and wealth are fought among warlords or petty thugs. Totalitarianism is all about strength, though unity, of the state. It abhors division, diversity, or individuality.
“Militarism” is also a means to an end. Rhetoric of lofty goals and big promises are backed up by force. The fascist movements that began to form in both Italy and then Germany after WWI were overthrowing the establishment, while also competing for followers against the communists and anarchists as violent militarism spread all around. But the fascists, alone, had the support of former soldiers who were still reeling from the effects of the gruesome warfare of the Great War and were more than willing to join these nationalist causes by restoring order amid the chaos of the times and to rebuild their respective nations to their former glorious statuses. Fascist militarism very quickly became entrenched, integrated into the ideology as a whole, and as the movements grew, large armies were built up, which became a projection of the states' external power as well as their internal enforcer and eliminator of undesirables in the movements' quests to create their idealized, “pure” nations.
“Fundamentalism” goes hand in hand with the willingness to use violence toward some “higher cause.” Fascism is a fundamentalist viewpoint, a deep commitment to strictly adhere to what are interpreted to be the core principles, a reductionist approach that focuses on certain key tenets and ignores any contradictions that exist. And fascism is certainly full of contradictions. The Doctrine of Fascism is a fascinating document, indeed, which outlines the philosophical basis for the ideology in spiritual and ethical terms, which would seem to directly contradict its violent and oppressive nature, yet was very convincing as a new way forward for Europeans who were seeking inspiration, order, and a real change in direction during the disarray that followed a particularly brutal war and the breakup of the European political and economic landscape that had been in place since the end of the Napoleonic Wars. The author of the document (it was signed by and attributed to Mussolini, but most likely was written by the philosopher, Giovanni Gentile) makes this statement about its purpose:
“It is not merely a question of gathering elements for a program, to be used as a solid foundation for the constitution of a party which must inevitably arise from the Fascist movement; it is also a question of denying the silly tale that Fascism is all made up of violent men. In point of fact among Fascists there are many men who belong to the restless but meditative class.”
Among its proclamations are these:
“Fascism wants man to be active and to engage in action with all his energies; it wants him to be manfully aware of the difficulties besetting him and ready to face them. It conceives of life as a struggle in which it behooves a man to win for himself a really worthy place, first of all by fitting himself (physically, morally, intellectually) to become the implement required for winning it. As for the individual, so for the nation, and so for mankind. Hence the high value of culture in all its forms (artistic, religious, scientific) and the outstanding importance of education. Hence also the essential value of work, by which man subjugates nature and creates the human world (economic, political, ethical, and intellectual).
“This positive conception of life is obviously an ethical one. It invests the whole field of reality as well as the human activities which master it. No action is exempt from moral judgment; no activity can be despoiled of the value which a moral purpose confers on all things. Therefore life, as conceived of by the Fascist, is serious, austere, and religious; all its manifestations are poised in a world sustained by moral forces and subject to spiritual responsibilities. The Fascist disdains an “easy" life.
“The Fascist conception of life is a religious one, in which man is viewed in his immanent relation to a higher law, endowed with an objective will transcending the individual and raising him to conscious membership of a spiritual society. Those who perceive nothing beyond opportunistic considerations in the religious policy of the Fascist regime fail to realize that Fascism is not only a system of government but also and above all a system of thought.”
...
“Anti-individualistic, the Fascist conception of life stresses the importance of the State and accepts the individual only in so far as his interests coincide with those of the State, which stands for the conscience and the universal will of man as a historic entity. It is opposed to classical liberalism which arose as a reaction to absolutism and exhausted its historical function when the State became the expression of the conscience and will of the people. Liberalism denied the State in the name of the individual; Fascism reasserts the rights of the State as expressing the real essence of the individual. And if liberty is to he the attribute of living men and not of abstract dummies invented by individualistic liberalism, then Fascism stands for liberty, and for the only liberty worth having, the liberty of the State and of the individual within the State. The Fascist conception of the State is all embracing; outside of it no human or spiritual values can exist, much less have value. Thus understood, Fascism, is totalitarian, and the Fascist State - a synthesis and a unit inclusive of all values - interprets, develops, and potentates the whole life of a people.”
...
“Grouped according to their several interests, individuals form classes; they form trade-unions when organized according to their several economic activities; but first and foremost they form the State, which is no mere matter of numbers, the suns of the individuals forming the majority. Fascism is therefore opposed to that form of democracy which equates a nation to the majority, lowering it to the level of the largest number; but it is the purest form of democracy if the nation be considered as it should be from the point of view of quality rather than quantity, as an idea, the mightiest because the most ethical, the most coherent, the truest, expressing itself in a people as the conscience and will of the few, if not, indeed, of one, and ending to express itself in the conscience and the will of the mass, of the whole group ethnically molded by natural and historical conditions into a nation, advancing, as one conscience and one will, along the self same line of development and spiritual formation. Not a race, nor a geographically defined region, but a people, historically perpetuating itself; a multitude unified by an idea and imbued with the will to live, the will to power, self-consciousness, personality.”
...
“If liberalism spells individualism, Fascism spells government. The Fascist State is, however, a unique and original creation. It is not reactionary but revolutionary, for it anticipates the solution of certain universal problems which have been raised elsewhere, in the political field by the splitting up of parties, the usurpation of power by parliaments, the irresponsibility of assemblies; in the economic field by the increasingly numerous and important functions discharged by trade unions and trade associations with their disputes and ententes, affecting both capital and labor; in the ethical field by the need felt for order, discipline, obedience to the moral dictates of patriotism.
“Fascism desires the State to be strong and organic, based on broad foundations of popular support. The Fascist State lays claim to rule in the economic field no less than in others; it makes its action felt throughout the length and breadth of the country by means of its corporative, social, and educational institutions, and all the political, economic, and spiritual forces of the nation, organized in their respective associations, circulate within the State. A State based on millions of individuals who recognize its authority, feel its action, and are ready to serve its ends is not the tyrannical state of a mediaeval lordling. It has nothing in common with the despotic States existing prior to or subsequent to 1789. Far from crushing the individual, the Fascist State multiplies his energies, just as in a regiment a soldier is not diminished but multiplied by the number of his fellow soldiers.
“The Fascist State organizes the nation, but it leaves the individual adequate elbow room. It has curtailed useless or harmful liberties while preserving those which are essential. In such matters the individual cannot be the judge, but the State only.”
...
“The Fascist State expresses the will to exercise power and to command. Here the Roman tradition is embodied in a conception of strength. Imperial power, as understood by the Fascist doctrine, is not only territorial, or military, or commercial; it is also spiritual and ethical. An imperial nation, that is to say a nation which directly or indirectly is a leader of others, can exist without the need of conquering a single square mile of territory. Fascism sees in the imperialistic spirit -- i.e. in the tendency of nations to expand - a manifestation of their vitality. In the opposite tendency, which would limit their interests to the home country, it sees a symptom of decadence. Peoples who rise or rearise are imperialistic; renunciation is characteristic of dying peoples. The Fascist doctrine is that best suited to the tendencies and feelings of a people which, like the Italian, after lying fallow during centuries of foreign servitude, are now reasserting itself in the world.
“But imperialism implies discipline, the coordination of efforts, a deep sense of duty and a spirit of self-sacrifice. This explains many aspects of the practical activity of the regime, and the direction taken by many of the forces of the State, as also the severity which has to be exercised towards those who would oppose this spontaneous and inevitable movement of XXth century Italy by agitating outgrown ideologies of the XIXth century, ideologies rejected wherever great experiments in political and social transformations are being dared.”
This amazing document is a paradigm of twisted logic and contradiction as founding principles, an evangelistic conflation of antipathetic concepts of monumental proportions, an ideology that only an impressionable and unquestioning fundamentalist could love. Its overarching idea is the totalitarian subordination of the individual to the state on ethical, spiritual, romantically patriotic grounds. The need for discipline and unity calls for “the severity which has to be exercised towards those who would oppose this spontaneous and inevitable movement of XXth century Italy,” and rejects the aristocracies of Old Europe as well as the democracies that were so nineteenth century. This discipline was both moral and martial, and its severity was intended to apply to the personal discipline of all individuals, to the national social order, and on outward to the projection of the state's imperial power as a manifestation of its strength and vitality. Thus, violence against all enemies of the state, from within and from those who would resist its expansion, became a vital imperative. This fundamentalist collusion of morality and violence went on to take several European nations by storm, in large part because of the tendency of humans toward a mob mentality that spreads uncontrollably when emotion and collective behavior patterns overwhelm reasoned thought.
“Populism” is a term that, in its traditional sense, expresses class struggle, or a movement by the mass population against the ruling elite. These movements arise after people feel that exploitation and abuses of power have gone too far, beginning as protests or strikes that may grow violent if the demands of the people are not met. But it may also apply in a more generalized way when the herd behavior takes hold of people in times of emotional excitation, in panics, when fiery rhetoric has riled the spirits to move people toward irrational anger at some conspiracist enemy or cultural impurity or other perceived cause of social, moral, and economic decline. That fascism depends on these hyped-up emotional triggers to arouse its populist mass support is another example of direct contradiction that the fundamentalist mind-set allows to pass unexamined, as the document that lays out the fascist ideology specifically states that it “is not reactionary but revolutionary,” while any observer would agree that fascist movements have always been reactionary, even over-reactionary, to perceived cultural wrongs, fed by those emotional triggers, which they set out to right.
The Nazis rose to power in Germany as a populist movement reacting to the humiliations perpetrated on the nation by the Treaty of Versailles at the end of the Great War, wherein they were forced to agree to accept full responsibility for causing the war, to restrict military activities, to concede a significant amount of territory, and to pay hefty reparations, while no concessions had been made by any of the Allies. This treaty may have ended the war, but it fomented the anger and frustration from which the Nazi movement, with all of its horrors, blossomed. The chaos in Germany at that time was immense. The the beginnings of a world wide depression were exaggerated because the nation's military-industrial activity was being decommissioned and their previous import-export system had been disrupted; former soldiers were damaged and demoralized; the new parliamentary republican government, which had come about as a condition of peace talks and brought about the end of the mighty German Empire, was inexperienced; the labor movement was divided; the nation became polarized, with the radical left communist militias, called the Red Army, fighting in the streets against the radical right paramilitary Freikorps amidst the further economic hardships of constant general strikes, inflation, and a massive national debt.
By 1921, Hitler had become the enthusiastic leader of the National Socialist German Workers' Party, the Nazi Party, which was dedicated to a romantic nationalism through which they intended to unite all Germans. The term “socialist” is very confusing, as Hitler made contradictory statements on the subject. It seems likely that, at least in the beginning, the term was meant to signify the party's fervent opposition to finance capitalism, where antisemitism reared its ugly head because of the belief that the Jews were in full control of the banking system and also the corporations that the Nazis claimed were exploiting and dehumanizing the workers. They eventually claimed that the term “socialist” was really meant as an expression of unity of the entire society. But it is clear that the Nazi Party was never interested in the socialist philosophy of eliminating private wealth, and they were expressly anti-communist. Distrust of both the communists and the Jews was also tied to the idea that these two groups were not loyal to the German state because of their extra-national ties, which in turn tied into the Nazi fantasy about a return to ancient German roots, a longing for those times of cultural and racial purity. They wanted to build a stronger, better, more German German Empire. They were angry at the government for capitulating so devastatingly at the end of the war, which, during the peace talks, had been a very messy affair involving mutinies, rebellions, uprisings, more division and factional fighting, and so the treaty had only finally been signed to save the nation from further descent into chaos and additional suffering caused by the Allies' blockade. But the Nazis, with growing support from ex-soldiers, conservatives, and nationalists, felt that the country had been betrayed by their government, that the leadership had been weak and even treasonous. Their view was that, after the Kaiser had been forced to abdicate and the military to lose its wartime dictatorial power, the new democratic civilian government had acted in their own self-interests instead of for the good of the nation. Additionally, certain elements of society, namely, the communists, Jews, and any other non-Germans, had either purposely undermined the war effort or done so through lack of patriotic support. These theories spread in large part because Germany had jumped into the war in the first place believing that it would be an easy and quick affair, so as that illusion unraveled, they devised the conspiracy that their devastating loss must have been because of subversive internal causes, not because of any lack of superiority of the German people.
The Nazi Party continued to gain supporters during the 1920's due to their ability to focus all of the suspicions and mistrusts that arose out of extraordinary economic and social uncertainty toward those same cultural scapegoats. Factional violence had been constant. Hyper-inflation led to the borrowing of money from U.S. Banks by the German government, which led to high national debt, which was exacerbated by the contentious situation concerning the reparations, which led to less international trade leverage and growing unemployment. All the while, society seemed to be falling into moral decay with new artistic movements such as the Bauhaus architecture schools, jazz music, women cutting their hair and smoking cigarettes, the cabaret scene, the popularity among the youth of pulp fiction, and general promiscuity. In the first years the 1930's, the public lost confidence in the democratic process as infighting and increasing polarization led to successive presidential invocations of Article 48 of the Constitution, which gave “emergency” dictatorial powers to the Chancellor and the authority to bypass the parliament altogether. The Great Depression plunged the world economy into its deepest depths during this time, and the conservatives in the executive branch, lacking a majority in parliament, used their extraordinary power to enacted their economic experiment on the nation in the belief that less government spending was the way to spur economic growth. The experiment failed, and the Nazi Party grew as a centrist path between the conservatives and the socialists, with a populist message of redemption of the state through the strength of the regular, hard-working, patriotic German folks. Hitler became the German Chancellor in January of 1933 because the Nazi Party finally gained a majority in Parliament. He was soon appointed dictator in an attempt to stem ongoing violence, and he quickly consolidated immense power, eliminated his political enemies, and created a monster.
As a fascist movement, the case of the Nazis was much more racially focused than that of the Italian Fascists. It could be called Aryan Fascism, because their notion of the German state was one of purity and the superiority of the German stock. They took their plans to make a new and improved Germany to extremes, as they were determined to never allow what had happened to them at the end of the Great War to occur again. Their previous victimizations and humiliations were turned into a national rage, and the level of their overcompensation soon astounded the world. As in Italy, so too the Germans utilized state violence, centralized dictatorial powers, propaganda and the silencing of dissent, they based their deplorable actions on a fundamentalist view of what the perfect state should be, and they grew as a populist movement toward a unified nationalist goal. Also like the Italian Fascists, the Nazis promised to end the class wars that had been plaguing their nation and to create a fair system of collaboration across the economic spectrum. Once in power, they ensured that private wealth was used for state goals through regulations, quotas, profit-fixing, taxes, subsidies, government financing, threat of nationalization of private corportaions, and a web of directives that left the business owners no real choices in matters of how to run their companies. They were essentially “private” in name only, just as the so called “free press” was not free at all. Indeed, one of the main characteristics of fascism can be ascribed to its methods, in the unfettered use of not only propaganda, but empty promises, purposely deceitful language, conspiratorial accusations, fear mongering, and the opportunistic taking advantage of social disorientation during times of crisis to gain power and wide support by inciting what can only be described as mass hysteria.
Because I am trying to get at the heart of what defines “fascism,” let me look back through the characteristics I have been describing in another light. The first four characteristics, totalitarianism, militarism, fundamentalism, and populism, may, of course, exist independently or in combination with each other, but do they exclusively describe fascism? Three of these characteristics would more or less describe the present day Communist states of the People's Republic of China, North Korea, Laos, Vietnam, and Cuba, as well as formerly communist states, such as the United Soviet Socialist Republic. I would say that totalitarianism, militarism, and populism definitely all fall within the realm of communism, if not in their ideological foundations, then at least in their practice. It seems that the unstated practices may actually give more insight into what these competing ideologies are really all about than their stated manifestos do. For they are primarily political and economic systems, yet they carry quite a lot of extra baggage with them. This accounts for both the amazing similarities and the huge differences between the practice of both communism and fascism. In particular, while both turned out to be very oppressive, despite their populist uprisings, it is the one characteristic on my list that the two ideologies do not share – fundamentalism – that seems to best explain the differences in how the parties grew and gained enough support to take over the leadership of entire nations with their very different economic strategies. Communism's intentions were always clear: workers unite, rise up, overtake the aristocracy and wealthy minority, and then have the state control the wealth, supposedly equally divided among the entire population. When such groups did come to power and began to implement their plans, however, the outcome was not as had been envisioned, as it soon became apparent that a heavy hand is required to keep the system in place, and the oppression that is necessary to keep order has resulted in a lack of freedom that has been nearly impossible for the states to hide from their citizens, despite tight controls on society, state propaganda, and limited access to the outside world. The fascists, in contrast, based their system on a fundamentalist ideology of “one people, one empire, one leader,” a simplification that belied the real complexities of building a collaborative economic structure across all levels of society, the contradictions required to make totalitarianism seem like freedom, the hatred, distrust, and fear that they would depend upon as their engine of change, and the deep, intrinsic level of deceit that would be required to convince people to go along with it all.
The way that fascism was and still is best able to take hold in times of crisis is more frightening than any other of its facets, for that is the only way that the other characteristics would ever be allowed by society. Naomi Klein describes this phenomenon in her book, The Shock Doctrine, as what she calls “disaster capitalism.” The idea is that policies that would never be acceptable in a democratic system are pushed through during times of crisis, when people are disoriented, confused, and frightened. The excesses of fascism also follow this pattern of behavior, and policies that would never be accepted by society under normal circumstances are pushed through as “emergency” measures that then become institutionalized. This is how initial promises that are made and obedience to established law are wiggled out of, how martial law and imprisonment without habeas corpus, government collusion with businesses and industries, and secrecy, all supposedly in service to the state, come to be, while accountability goes unmet, political opponents are dispensed with, and great fortunes are made by private individuals through deals that are set up behind closed government doors.
In pointing out this similarity between fascism and disaster capitalism, I am wondering if the two are not actually two sides of the same coin. If fascism is a political-economic system that espouses distrust of capitalists and rejects the aristocracy's unearned wealth that offers nothing useful to society, yet is even more disdainful of the socialist idea of elimination of private capital, then how does it practice its promise of finding a middle ground between these two extremes? It doesn't. What fascism does is to offer national leadership and strength through cultural identity in times of great uncertainty, to create an illusion of equality through its vision of state unity, to promise each level of society that all will rise through this unified effort, yet once dictatorially empowered, the political regimes are no longer accountable to the populist movements who swept them into power, and so they turn to the corporatist structures to generate the wealth that, added to their military machines, magnifies their power ever more. So-called “free market capitalism” that is espoused by the so-called “fiscal conservatives” here in the present day United States of America, too, is a corporatist political-economic system that espouses distrust, yet does not practice what it preaches. In this twist on the fascist game plan, these politicians proclaim distrust of the government, and utter disdain for the socialist idea of having the government manage the economy, and so they promise to shrink the government, reduce “tax burdens,” deregulate businesses, and privatize government services in the belief that the free market system will automatically build a stronger society. So, instead of putting their public distrust into capitalism while secretly embracing it, the disaster capitalists put their public distrust into the government while secretly embracing it. The government is implicitly connected with the economic world, through deregulation and privatization, through policy making, such as public financing and government contracting and the practice of lobbying, through stewardship of the central bank and the national treasury, all of which are in no way accountable to We The People, but instead offer a revolving door through which government officials use their political power to generate personal wealth, which they continually reconvert back into political power, passing back and forth between the public and private sectors. And as Naomi Klein outlines in her book, the interconnected business leaders and their government allies await crises, at the ready for the opportunity to further bypass and undo democratic processes to grab yet more authoritarian powers, such as the power to spy on citizens, the power to imprison anyone without due processes, the power to hold secret meetings, the power to dispense the national treasury without any oversight, the power to militarily attack sovereign nations without declaring war... All of this is done in the same mold as the fascists, by offering national leadership and strength through cultural identity in times of great uncertainty, by creating an illusion of equality through its vision of state unity, by promising each level of society that all will rise through this unified effort, yet once dictatorially empowered, the political regimes are no longer accountable to the populist movements who swept them into power, and so they turn to the capitalist structures to generate the wealth that, added to their military machines, magnifies their power ever more.
Fascism, then, is insidious, deceitful, opportunistic, secretive, and abusive. It is the spouse who batters, so that its victim lives a double-life of both love and fear; of devotion to social and cultural values, and at the same time, terror of physical violence; an emotional roller coaster ride of genuine adoration, mixed with reverence toward the authority garnered by pain. As the couple hides their internal contradictions from all others, carefully obscuring the bruises, so too does the fascist system hide its inner operations from all who are not a part of the trusted inner circle. And as spousal abuse exists in free societies, so too can fascism creep into the halls of democratic government. While fascism abhors real democracy for its diversity, its minority voices, its deliberative cacophony, its decentralized power structure, just as the male abuser is misogynistic yet in love with the female form, fascism has the innate ability to sweet talk its way through democratic processes, and once the marriage has been consecrated, to then pathologically gain more and more control, through emotional, physical, even spiritual devices, always convincing its partner that its authority is necessary, escalating the violence, until the reign of terror is complete and inescapable.
Our nation is at the precipice of that inescapable completion of fascism's reign of terror, and if the transparency and democratic processes that have already been supplanted by it are not reclaimed now, the coup will indeed be swiftly accomplished. We are experiencing a massive economic crisis that the fascist right wants to take advantage of to push through unprecedented steps by transforming private debt into public debt. In the name of showing decisive leadership, this would complete the fascist takeover by emptying the public coffers so that the programs that are considered to be “socialist” in nature, that is, social security, the education system, any hope for health care reform, and other public aid programs, will be forced into abandonment, while faith in free market capitalism as the shining beacon of society will push through yet more privatization and deregulation so that the business leaders can purportedly continue to uphold the rest of society, regardless of their inability to lead their financial institutions in a responsible way. But, no matter, the institutions are “too big to fail,” which apparently sets them above the laws of the land. This action would not only set the precedent of taking drastic measures with public money that would signal the death knell of all government services, but would further pound the nail in the coffin of any remnant of democratic structures or constitutional rights that we might be clinging to by giving far too much power to the executive branch that will be very difficult to rescind. The governmental overseers of our national economy want to hire private contractors, at their own discretion, to come in and advise them, behind closed doors, and with the caveat that any decisions “may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.” If our legislators allow anything like this to occur, then they will be ceding their own relevance once and for all, and the struggling people of this nation will drown under the pressures of more job losses despite this bailout that is supposed to keep the economy “growing” (because, in reality, it has already stagnated), more home foreclosures, more impossible-to-pay-back credit (because the banks keep adding fees, changing their policies, and refusing to negotiate repayment programs), rising interest rates, rising costs of living, tumbling home values, and the falling of the U.S. Dollar. With the supposed lack of government funds to help the growing masses of poor, more privatized police, military, and jails will be needed to “keep the peace,” or to quell the dissent of all who would oppose the government for their culpability in the downfall of the nation. Freedom will no longer be on the march, and corporations will become the new slave owners.
So, how's that for a Scary Story? My goal with this essay has been to look at history as a way of understanding how the current situation has come to be, of how the national conversation in this country, at the beginning of the twenty first century, could be moving in such an unenlightened way toward what I have determined is indeed fascism, just as similar movements arose at the beginning of the last century, instead of progressing toward a more just, equal, and peaceful future through the promise of real democracy. The collosal problems that we face today are being reacted to in much the same unenlightened way - with raw emotion and a profound susceptibility to disinformation campaigns and fear-mongering rumors - and this in the information age?! Why hasn't the truth set us free? Why doesn't instant access to multiple sources and thus verifyable information through the World Wide Web simply set the record straight on any and all arguments of fact? This irony boggles my mind. It seems that instead of freeing our minds, it has only served to congeal our mindsets into the mold that they were already forming into. The World Wide Web has served better as the messenger of those misinformation and fear-mongering campaings that are moving ever and ever closer to imprisoning us. Again, the giant anvil of irony falling upon all of our heads... How lazy and closed-minded can a large segment of society be - to only accept certain sources of information, like the Bible, or Fox News, when there is so much more out there, ready and available, with the most minimal of effort necessary to access it? Alas, poor Yorick!
In the face of this staggering ineptitude, I stand my ground even more determinedly that the “Liberal Left,” those of us who see through all the lies and manipulations of language and the media, who do seek out answers by finding multiple sources of information and taking into consideration who is dispensing it, who take on complicated issues and try to sort them out for ourselves, and who understand that corporatism has taken over the role of the citizens in our democracy, with more rights to free speach and more influence over our government bodies, that we are not the radicals of this society, but are the last stand of real democracy. We believe in the Constitution, in the Rule of Law, and in full, fair, and truthfully informed democratic procedures, in all of their messy glory, to determine what the laws and policies should be and if the Constitution is being upheld or not.
I have been trying to bring to light what fascism is really all about, in order to identify its creep into our once more democratic (although never completely democratic) system. By looking at the historical events that allowed fascism to take hold in the past in Italy and in much more detail in Germany, which was a parliamentary democracy until Hitler came to power and had himself declared dictator, I have come across striking similarities between those times and these: a nation that went to war thinking that it would be quick and easy, but then getting bogged down, unwilling to admit military defeat, becoming politically polarized, falling into financial difficulties, loosing confidence in their government, looking desperately for strong leadership, and falling for conspiracy theories and false accusations about those within and without who oppose the romantic call for cultural purity and supposed morality that drives mass hysteria and leaves reasoned decision-making far behind in favor of emotional impulsiveness...
What I have concluded about what defines fascism is that it has certain distinctive characteristics, but that those characteristics cannot individually indicate that fascism exists, rather, they must all be somewhat present. The tendency toward totalitarianism, militarism, fundamentalism, populism, in conjunction with the economic-political policy of corporate collusion with the state, the perpetuation of the idea that the workers and middle class must depend on those same corporate leaders as the best path between the extremes of oligarchy and socialism, the deceitful way that popular support is gathered, and the opportunistic method of utilizing crises to gain inexorable power and control – all of this describes what fascism is. To be clear, it abhors diversity, internationalism, and rights of individuals. It is dedicated to a strongly centralized unity, whether it be based on nationalism, religion, or cultural identity. It employs demagoguery, propaganda, obfuscation, scapegoating, and extreme violence toward that end. And it blossoms from within populist fears, distrusts of elites and outsiders, and insecurities, fed by conspiracies and alleged betrayals at times of deep economic crises, with the promise that by joining all classes together, each in their rightful places, no one more valuable than the other, all will rise as one in a glorious rebirth of a whole, better, stronger community.
With this understanding, I want to put an end to the uninformed flinging of the accusation of “fascism,” especially coming from the Right toward the Left. Jonah Goldberg's book, Liberal Fascism, takes the cake on the twisting around of terminology. In that book, he tries to argue that certain tenets of Progressive ideology amount to fascism, such as political correctness, populist ideas, state involvement in management of the economy, and collectively working toward a stronger and better state. The problem with this kind of analysis is that it exaggerates the intentions and degree to which these characteristics are implemented as well as picks individual characteristics to deride while ignoring that the most definitive signs of fascism are fundamentalist, purist, patriotic, and emotion-driven, the ones that condone violence, deceit, and opportunism. True Progressives, on the other hand, take the more gentle path, rejecting violence, deceit, and opportunism, always in favor of creating change through adjusting laws to be on par with current social norms, adhering to the Constitution (but not in an originalist, narrow interpretation of it, as if social norms hadn't changed through time from those of the Founding Fathers), and demanding our rights within a system of democratic ideals. Populism does not fascism make, as real democracy is a populist system, isn't it? Political correctness is a way to move society forward, to make people aware that certain terms and practices carry old prejudices that would be better left behind, but to insinuate that this is something that would be enforced by police or violence is pure paranoia. The state involvement in the economy that is so abhorrent to the Right is selective toward general services and the taxation to support them, yet setting policy or granting government contracts that allow business leaders to amass fortunes in ways that harm their workers, the environment, and consumers while not giving anything back to the state for these favors, but instead being allowed to lobby and give campaign contributions and high-paying jobs to individual Congresspersons, is “freedom.” And, finally, the idea that collectively, we can all work together and sacrifice just a little in order to build a better nation for all of us is not such a horrible idea. It is the work of Ayn Rand that has convinced so many in our society that selfishness is somehow the highest good, the way toward a strong society, the noblest manifestation of the human spirit, and thus sets up the false dichotomy that any suggestion of sacrifice toward the greater good is evil.
So how can fascism be resisted? It must be identified correctly, which I hope I have done. Its favored soil from which to sprout must be identified as well, which I hope I have also done here. Although I have explored the possibility that it already exists in a new incarnation within our own democracy, it is the principles of true democracy themselves that can and will defeat it, if it hasn't already spread its cancer too widely amid the body politic. Its deceitful nature is its method of creeping into democracy in the first place, so it must be expelled through shining the light on secrecy and following the rule of law, no matter what national emergency we face. As I began this exploration stating, there is no place for secrecy in a true democracy. There is also no exception in the Constitution for “emergency” situations. And while modern history has pitted two opposing forces as capitalism versus socialism, the real enemy of freedom and democracy is insipid, secretive, deceitful fascism. Further, since secrecy is a major culprit in the spreading of conspiracies and rumors that fascism depends on to infect democracy, then the abolition of secret societies and secrets in government would go a long way toward keeping people's attention focused on how to solve real problems of poverty, inequity, injustice, violence, and hatred.
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