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Scholarly Essay on U.S. Fascism Growth Omits Key Factors Comment by Larry Ross, November 29, 2006
The following essay is very worthwhile and a great exercise in scholarship and analysis within traditional and conventional parameters. However the authors don't take into account that an unscrupulous ruling administration like the Bush Regime, may resort to extraordinary and carefully planned tactics to bring about the kind of American fascism that would be accepted by the public - including endless 'wars on terror', the use of nuclear weapons and the ending of U.S. civil liberties. The American people will accept all this and an end to the U.S. Constitution so long as the ideology, excuses and reasons for such draconian measures are believable. As Huey Long said: "If fascism comes to America it will in the guise of anti-fascism" needed to defend 'American freedom and democracy' from 'Islamic fascism' etc. It will be wrapped in the American flag, patriotism and religion. In particular, a triggering event, like another 9/11 as Daniel Ellesberg suggests, or an out-of-the-blue pre-emptive nuclear strike on Iran, could be the cause of sudden, but carefully planned, fascism in America . Hitler's burning of the Reichstag gave him the permission of the state and people to quickly establish the Nazi dictatorship fascist state. Hitler's Reichstag fire was a successfully planned 'False Flag' event. The neoconservative soul of the Bush Administration has shown itself very capable of planning similar 'False Flag' events. Many think they have already demonstrated how they can make history and orchestrate their new deceitful 'truths' to suit, with the phoney 9/11 attack. Their litany of lies to justify their continuing illegal war on Iraq is another good example of their artful Machiavellian deceptions. If one accepts these possibilities, the slower growth of U.S. fascist tendencies as a class action in response to U.S. Imperial decline may not be a complete explanation. It may be that conspiratorial events and wars based on deceit are seen to be needed by the Bush regime as the planned triggers for sudden fascist developments in America and the necessary mass conversion of the American people away from 'freedom and democracy'. Extracts from a very long scholarly article on "Fascism: It Could Happen Here"
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It Could Happen Here
A deepening crisis pervades Pax Americana and with it a rising interest in fascism and the fear that it may be coming or is already here. While some observers are alarmed at the prospects of fascism, others dismiss the topic as conspiracy theory or just plain rubbish. In the most absurd recent use of the term, George W. Bush has declared America at war “with Islamic fascists seeking to destroy freedom loving societies.” It is hard here not to invoke Huey Long's famous idea that fascism would come to America clothed as anti-fascism. The fact that more is being said about fascism in America indicates that a thorough and ongoing debate is now in order. Yet discussions of this sort will inevitably take us into a virtual minefield, especially given the commonplace perception of fascism as a form of totalitarianism that occurred in the past and can never happen again. We propose that the current talk about fascism has arisen from conditions that can be best summed up as a general crisis of Pax Americana . By general crisis we mean a convergence of developments, long-term and short, pervading the social order that have rendered much of it dysfunctional and dystopian. Stated in another way, the concept of a general crisis describes Pax Americana in economic, political, social and cultural decline. Its long-term causes are rooted in the mid-1970s, where we see the beginnings—brought on in part by the oil shocks to the American economy attributed to the rise of OPEC, and the military defeat in Vietnam—of the dissolution of U.S. economic hegemony over the global capitalist system. These proved costly to U.S. credibility around the world and suggested that the idea of American invincibility was indeed a myth. Despite the so-called triumph over communism trumpeted as a victory by the Reagan administration, the heralding of a New World Order by George H. W. Bush, or the hollow economic boom brokered by Bill Clinton's neoliberalism, the crisis of Pax Americana deepened throughout the 1980s and 1990s.
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