The New Fascism

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William Rivers Pitt | The New Fascism

Tue, 17 Jan 2006 10:00:48 -0800

 

 

 

 

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/011706I.shtml

 

 

 

The New Fascism

By William Rivers Pitt

t r u t h o u t | Perspective

 

 

Tuesday 17 January 2006

 

The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present.

The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the

occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We

must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.

 

- Abraham Lincoln

 

Say " fascism " to anyone you meet, and you will conjure images of

coal-scuttle helmets, of Nazi boot-heels clicking in terrible unison

down Berlin streets during dark days that only a few remaining among

the living remember. Each day, members of the generation that heard

those heels for themselves go into the ground, taking with them

whispered words of warning. I saw it for myself, they whisper before

they pass. See this tattooed number? See this scar? It happened. It

was real.

 

Say " fascism " to anyone you meet, and you will be greeted with the

boilerplate response of the blithely overconfident: such a thing

cannot happen here. This is the United States of America, land of the

free and home of the brave. Ours is a nation of laws, of checks and

balances, of righteousness and decency. Our laws and traditions stand

as a bulwark against the rise of totalitarian madness. It cannot

happen here. Thus we are indoctrinated into the school of our own

assumed greatness.

 

" We must disenthrall ourselves, " said Abraham Lincoln, and so we

must, because it can happen here. It is already happening. All the

parroted recitations of grade school civics cannot erase the fact that

a new order is rising. Call it " secret fascism " or " smiley-faced

fascism. " Call it a quiet dictatorship. Call it what you like, but it

is here with us in America today, and it is growing.

 

To be sure, there are no coal-scuttle helmets lined in ranks down

our broad avenues, no Tonton Macoute savaging dissidents, no Khmer

Rouge slaughtering intellectuals and herding citizens from cities to

die by the millions on roads littered with skulls. The core strength

of our new fascism is that it speaks softly. It does not present

itself in such an obvious way that those who subsist on the dogmas of

our greatness can point and say there, there it is, I see it.

 

This new fascism is not fed only by lies, though to be sure the

lies are there in preposterous abundance. This new fascism is fed by

myths, our myths, the myths by which we rock ourselves to sleep. This

new fascism is in truth an elemental fascism, reborn today by a

confluence of events; the diligent work of the few, in combination

with the passivity of the many, have brought forth this new order.

 

The writer Umberto Eco, in a 1995 essay titled " Ur-Fascism, "

delineated several core elements that have existed in one form or

another in every fascist state in history: " Parliamentary democracy is

by definition rotten, because it does not represent the voice of the

people, which is that of the sublime leader. Doctrine outstrips

reason, and science is always suspect. The national identity is

provided by the nation's enemies. Argument is tantamount to treason.

Perpetually at war, the state must govern with the instruments of

fear. Citizens do not act; they play the supporting role of 'the

people' in the grand opera that is the state. "

 

Take these one at a time.

 

" Parliamentary democracy is by definition rotten, because it does

not represent the voice of the people, which is that of the sublime

leader. "

 

George W. Bush has all but gelded Congress in recent months,

attaching so-called " signing statements " to a variety of laws, which

state that the president may act beyond the laws whenever he so

chooses. The United States, fashioned as a republic, has as its voice

the congressional body. This is all but finished. To cement his

victory over the parliamentary system, Bush has put forth one Samuel

Alito for the Supreme Court, a man who believes in the ultimate power

of the one leader over the many. The gelded congress does not appear

able to keep this man from the high court, thus rendering the

balancing branches of government into a satellite system of the Executive.

 

" Doctrine outstrips reason, and science is always suspect. "

 

The supremacy of religious fundamentalism within and without

government carries this banner before all others. What is reason in

the face of the zealot's faith? Science has become a watered-down

vessel for Intelligent Design, and the incontrovertible truths of

empirical data are slapped aside. Spencer Tracy, in the film " Inherit

the Wind, " bellows the warning here: " Fanaticism and ignorance is

forever busy, and needs feeding. And soon, your Honor, with banners

flying and with drums beating we'll be marching backward, backward,

through the glorious ages of that sixteenth century, when bigots

burned the man who dared to bring enlightenment and intelligence to

the human mind. "

 

" The national identity is provided by the nation's enemies. "

 

This has been with us for generations now. Our nation defined

ourselves through a comparison to the Nazis, to the Imperial Japanese,

and then through decades of comparison to Communism. Terrorism has

supplanted all of these, hammered into place on a Tuesday in September

by the actions of madmen. We are not them, all is justified in the

struggle against them, and so we are defined.

 

" Argument is tantamount to treason. "

 

All one need do to see this in action is spend some hours with the

Fox News channel. Freedom fries. Why do you hate America? You are with

us or you are with the terrorists. Watch what you say.

 

" Perpetually at war, the state must govern with the instruments of

fear. "

 

The manipulation of this population by fear has been ham-fisted,

to be sure, but has also been cruelly effective. We do not want the

evidence to be a mushroom cloud. Weapons of mass destruction and al

Qaeda in Iraq. Nuclear designs in Iran. Plastic sheeting and duct

tape. Orange alert. Argument becomes tantamount to treason simply

because everyone has been made to feel fear at all times. A frightened

populace is easily governed, and governs itself; this lesson was

well-learned in the duck-and-cover days of the Cold War. Those lessons

have been masterfully applied once again. Today, the citizenry polices

itself, and the herd moves as one body. Even the surveillance of

innocent citizens by the state is brushed off as a necessary evil.

Remember: you are being watched.

 

" Citizens do not act; they play the supporting role of 'the

people' in the grand opera that is the state. "

 

Once, we lived by the glorious simplicity of the vote. Casting a

ballot was the single most patriotic duty a citizen could perform, an

affirmation of all we held dear and true. Today, we live in the nation

of the vanishing voter. Power has been so far removed from the people

by those with money and influence that most see voting as a waste of

time. Add to this the growing control of the implements of voting and

vote-counting by partisan corporations, and the rule of We the People

is left in ashes.

 

We must disenthrall ourselves from the idea that our institutions,

our traditions, the barriers that protect us from absolute and

authoritarian powers, cannot be broken down. They are being dismantled

a brick at a time. The separation of powers has already been

annihilated. It is a whispered fascism, not yet marching down your

street or pounding upon your door in the dead of night. But it is

here, and it is laying deep roots. We must listen beyond the whispered

fascism of today to the shouted fascism of tomorrow. We must look

beyond the lies and the myths, beyond the dogmas by which we sleep.

 

William Rivers Pitt is a New York Times and internationally

bestselling author of two books: War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn't

Want You to Know and The Greatest Sedition Is Silence.

 

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