It’s hard to believe that it has been nearly
nine years, but I vividly remember the night the Iraq War began.
I was in graduate school at the time, and I
was walking with a friend toward the University Union to have a cup of
coffee. As we approached the door, a
woman thrust an antiwar leaflet at us – “Stop the invasion!” My friend waved her away. As we walked off she hissed, “Fascists!”
I was taken aback, and a little bemused. The leaflet lady didn’t know me, of course,
but I had spent much of that week engaged in various campus activities
concerning the impending conflict. I’d
participated in two antiwar demos already and had been part of a panel
symposium on the war and its likely consequences. But the epithet stung.
For many in the American left, “fascist” is a
catchall label for people and ideas they oppose, a word thrown around much in
the way right-wingers so often did with “Communist” in earlier generations and
do with “anti-American” and “terrorist” today.
All these terms can be thought-terminating clichés. But remembering that encounter all those
years ago outside the University Union has made me reflect on what fascism is
and whether it could take root on American soil.
This is a worrisome question that has recurred
in times of social ferment since the 1930s.
In fact, we often allude to it in everyday discourse—consider the
popularity of the reductio ad Hitlerum as
a rhetorical device. However, since 9/11
there has been particular cause for concern. In spite of the best efforts of civil
libertarians to raise the alarm the American public as a whole has been remarkably
quiescent in the face of the PATRIOT Act, no-fly lists, increased surveillance,
ever-tightening airport security measures, and a policy of extrajudicial
killings abroad. Although Americans have
unprecedented access to news and information most seem to believe ignorance is
bliss.
As they did in many Western countries, various fascist movements took hold in the United
States in the years before the Second World War. While none of them had large
memberships or gained widespread support, the German-American Bund and the
Silver Shirts are still mentioned in histories of the time. Similarly, demagogic public figures such as
Huey Long, William Dudley Pelley, and Fr. Francis Coughlin were characterized
by their detractors as fascist.
After the defeat of Fascist Italy and Nazi
Germany, it became socially unacceptable to openly espouse fascist
ideologies. However, the anti-Communism
engendered by the Cold War represented the sort of sociopolitical reaction that
too often aped fascism, albeit loosely. To
this day, currents of fascist tendencies run beneath the surface of American political
discourse.
Fascism is one of those elusive concepts that
form in the eye of the beholder, as we saw in my opening anecdote. But we do have a few good rules of thumb for
recognition. For instance, Umberto Eco
points to characteristics such as preoccupation with tradition,
anti-intellectualism, intolerance of dissent, xenophobia, middle class fears of
economic distress, populism, and the need for an external enemy to provide unity. Stanley Payne identifies like attributes,
among them the belief in a need for strong political authority,
anti-liberalism, and anti-Communism.
Certain character
types may be particularly attracted to fascist ideas, such as the authoritarian
personality described by Hannah Arendt. Similarly, Richard Hofstadter’s description
of American anti-intellectualism incorporates fascist tropes such as resentment
of cosmopolitan urbanites and foreigners.
The American preference for practical pursuits over the contemplative
life is reminiscent of the pronouncement of Benito Mussolini’s in-house
philosopher, Giovanni Gentile, that while fascism wasn’t opposed to
intelligence per se it was emphatically against intellectualism.
While we like
to see ourselves as individualists, and while our national self-image is
largely built on this belief, there is a strong current of conformism and
deference to authority in our daily lives.
I don’t think this is case just with blue collar red staters,
either. Training in the top-down group
ethos begins early regardless of social background, whether we recognize it or
not. Parenting practices may range from strict, “Because I said so” demands for
unquestioning obedience to presenting a narrow range of “choices” to follow,
but few parents teach their kids to be truly autonomous. Starting in elementary school, we sit in
orderly rows reminiscent of soldiers in ranks.
By high school, our teachers and administrators choose our leaders and
heroes for us; they seldom if ever rise from below. We’re also told, sometimes overtly, sometimes
by default, who doesn’t fit in and should thereby be socially excluded.
As adults our work
is often highly structured. We attend
church much more frequently than our brethren in other Western countries -- a
belief in revealed religion is not normally conducive to independent thought. Our heavily corporatized media presents a
homogeneous viewpoint that doesn’t challenge the status quo. The propaganda function of
the mainstream media is well-documented and we can’t blame it all on Fox
News or AM talk radio, either. Minor
editorial differences aside, news content varies little from source to
source. Rarely do we ever see or hear
progressive views.
And so we're
always ready to rally ‘round the flag. Patriotism is defined as unquestioning
support for our leaders, politicians of all ideological stripes sport flag lapel pins as a silent protest of their loyalty, and
anyone who questions the direction in which the country is heading clearly
“hates America.” The chilling effect on dissent over the past
ten years has been significant; peer pressure and deference to authority has
become the norm. While we look away from
the acts of the powers that be, we focus all the more on the powerless.
The current
economic crisis has the middle class groping blindly for
culprits. Not the obvious ones, mind
you. Since your typical suburbanite feels
a stronger affinity for CEOs, hedge fund managers, and investment bankers than
for the poor and marginalized, it’s the latter whom he blames for the subprime mortgage
meltdown. In his mind it was
Democrat-imposed legislation forcing banks to lend to low-income borrowers,
particularly minorities, that pushed us down the slippery slope to
disaster. In this climate it’s no
surprise that James O’Keefe’s prank on ACORN resonated with
conservatives and that President Obama’s past work as a community organizer
raised hackles during the 2008 campaign.
It’s probably best for him that he didn’t try to organize immigrants.
Nativism is
alive and well in America, as a cursory look at recent events shows. It’s hardly new, though. The escalating war on immigrants, documented
or not, reflects a cyclical phenomenon
in our history stretching back all the way to the Know-Nothings of the early
nineteenth century. But despite the progress we tell ourselves we've made since the Civil Rights Movement,
the enactment of SB 1070 in Arizona and HB 56 in Alabama lays bare a decidedly
ugly vein of bigotry. Another example is
our exaggerated fear of Muslims and people who are or are perceived to be
Middle Eastern. Racial profiling in
general is a result of a deep-seated fear of people unlike us.
The phrase, “people
unlike us” may well apply to the so-called Red/Blue state divide though this is
hardly a new development. The rapid urbanization
of American society a century ago engendered a deep-seated distrust of cities among
rural and small-town people. For them cities
were breeding grounds of sin and magnets for un-American elements. The Scopes Trial, rural support of
Prohibition, and the revival of the Ku Klux Klan during the 1920s were all signs
of a emerging social chasm that has persisted to this day.
Another hint of a latent fascism shows in how we’ve constructed our national identity. Our society valorizes toughness and violence. It isn’t just our penchant for action films,
first-person shooter video games, and other escapist pastimes. It’s interwoven in our heritage of conquest
and global hegemony. The cult of strength
also reveals a certain misogyny—if masculinity is good, its inverse,
femininity, is implicitly bad for its presumed weakness. Moreover, this bias is reflected in
statements from our national leaders. President
Bush’s taunt to Iraqi insurgents to “Bring it on” played well with the public, despite
the backlash from his political opponents. When Donald Rumsfeld claimed “weakness is
provocative,” he was not just pointing out the need for a strong defense. He was expressing a contempt for those who
fail to live up to the ideal of the taciturn lone hero of our popular
self-imagination.
I suppose we
don’t notice these tendencies as we’re a steadfastly apolitical people not given to reflection. We’re put off by the drone of daily coverage in no small part because we aren’t offered any real choice with the
two major parties. We vote—that’s the
extent of our political activity. Otherwise,
we tune out. Without any meaningful
outlet for involvement we turn inward to our private concerns. Because we’ve largely abandoned the public sphere, the
vacuum has been filled by those who don’t have the public good as their
priority. And their manipulation of
public sentiment puts us at risk of being ultimately complicit in our own oppression.
Do I believe that the United States is
fascist? Of course not. Do I believe that our country has the potential
to become fascist? I believe
that we're susceptible given our cultural proclivities. If and when fascism does come, it won’t be
with banners, black shirts, and jackboots.
Sinclair Lewis’ pronouncement is as prescient now as it was 75 years
ago: “When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and
carrying a cross.”
© 2012 The Unassuming Scholar
