A few snips from Patrick Walker's essay at OpEd News.com:
I do not regard fascism and totalitarianism as synonyms. The proper way to view matters is that a very pernicious form of fascism (and of course, the word fascism implies it's pernicious) can exist without totalitarian control; if totalitarianism implies near-total government control over people's lives, it strikes me that government can do a particular sort of grievous harm to its subject population--harm that fully merits the term fascism-- while still falling short of totalitarian dominance.
The alarming part is that fascism can fool a nation's people and have them deeply in its grip before they've even noticed--largely because they've confused fascism with totalitarianism, and falsely conclude they're fascism-free because daily life isn't (yet) totally under their government's thumb. The hopeful part is that because fascism can exist for some time without totalitarianism, people can (if sufficiently awakened) still retain enough freedom to fight back and reverse their nation's fascist course. I think ALL these characteristics--except, scarily, the sufficient awakening--exist in today's United States.
So a key part of modernity is that the vast masses of humanity believe (at some level) in democracy, so even the most tyrannical governments must somehow fake it. So fascism is essentially a cancer on democracy, and would not exist without its modern democratic host. Which brings us to the quintessentially modern means by which the fascist spreads: mass propaganda, as enabled by modern communications media.
It's in its absolutely central reliance on mass propaganda that fascism proves its incestuously close relationship with democracy, for a weakened democratic body is the only kind fascism's cancer can grow in. (Not that there aren't truly awful regimes that were never in any sense democratic; my point is that they're simply not fascist.)
Our long brainwashing by electronic media advertising has in many ways been our grade school for graduation to fascism, and it's especially sobering to realize that Goebbels learned much of his satanic bag of tricks from American advertisers.
Quite simply, it's too potentially dangerous--and too disreputably messy--to control large modern populations (especially ones that believe in democracy) by force, so mind control through mass propaganda (and its Siamese twin, censorship) has become the preferred modern means of tyranny.
So, based on my careful analysis, U.S. citizens presently live under a dangerous form of fascism, but not yet under totalitarianism. Let's use the precious freedoms still remaining to us to assure we don't get there, that our leaders don't continue to overreach. We must, for example, drastically cut back on government spying, and we must protect the precious right of all citizens to vote. But for now, we must above all stop Obama from approving the XL pipeline, for its construction will require a savage crackdown on civil disobedience from which our Constitutional freedoms may never recover.
It's a very good essay, well worth a read in full. Exactly what those individuals who agree with Mr Walker's view can do isn't set out though. It sounds, kind of, do-able to "assure that... our leaders don't continue to overreach. We must, for example, drastically cut back on government spying, and we must protect the precious right of all citizens to vote. But for now, we must above all stop Obama from approving the XL pipeline...."
I hope that there will be an essay to follow, with information on exactly how these things are still within reach of "we", the ordinary people in the USA.
We've been over similar ground before on this blog, last June: -
New Fashion Fascism. I guess it does no harm to keep it at the forefront of our minds.
