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Donald Ian Rankin

(13,598 posts)
Sun Sep 14, 2014, 06:09 PM Sep 2014

Fascism in America is precisely the wrong thing to worry about.

Ideologies are like bacteria. Once you've caught one, and seen where it leads, your inoculated against it.

America will never accept anything that closely resembles fascism, or communism, or feudalism or monarchy, or found an empire.

American society may well go horribly off the rails in other, new and original ways - the growth of economic inequality may lead to all sorts of unpleasant places, for example.

But the one set of things it is safe against are the ones that have already gone wrong elsewhere. If something is an obvious worry, it's probably not worth worrying about; the big worries are the non-obvious ones.

The most important lessons are precisely the ones that cannot be learned from history.

36 replies = new reply since forum marked as read
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Fascism in America is precisely the wrong thing to worry about. (Original Post) Donald Ian Rankin Sep 2014 OP
Well see that's where you're wrong already. America....... socialist_n_TN Sep 2014 #1
Well Put, Sir The Magistrate Sep 2014 #5
In Illinois, the neo-aristocracy is well established. AngryAmish Sep 2014 #36
Follow the analogy further.... correaman13 Sep 2014 #2
I disagree with you atreides1 Sep 2014 #3
Fascism and feudalism can erupt in America today. Remember when the protests in Ferguson, Louisiana1976 Sep 2014 #4
I notice you fastidiously avoided the term "Oligarchy", which is what USA has become IMHO 99th_Monkey Sep 2014 #6
Check it out: Empire - The Rise of the Oligarchs 99th_Monkey Sep 2014 #11
"or found an empire." marmar Sep 2014 #7
Inoculations can wear off over time. Erich Bloodaxe BSN Sep 2014 #8
Mussolini, the founder of fascism hifiguy Sep 2014 #9
+1000 RagAss Sep 2014 #12
A-yup! joeybee12 Sep 2014 #23
how soft is a fascism that has the largest prison population in the world librechik Sep 2014 #32
It's "soft" in the sense hifiguy Sep 2014 #33
interesting.Thx for the info, hifiguy! librechik Sep 2014 #34
FFS ...so The most important lessons are the ones we'll get sometime in the future? Ok. L0oniX Sep 2014 #10
Wee MFrohike Sep 2014 #13
Good post. nt woo me with science Sep 2014 #15
So a country in which edhopper Sep 2014 #14
Are you planning to cast a vote in November? Nye Bevan Sep 2014 #18
Princeton study edhopper Sep 2014 #19
We don't yet have a word for it. Donald Ian Rankin Sep 2014 #20
okay edhopper Sep 2014 #21
I'm saying you're less fucked up than most of the rest of the world, but not perfect. Donald Ian Rankin Sep 2014 #22
We are more fucked up edhopper Sep 2014 #24
In that specific respect, than that minority of countries, yes you are. N.T. Donald Ian Rankin Sep 2014 #25
I compare us the countries edhopper Sep 2014 #26
I think you have cause and effect at least partly backwards there. Donald Ian Rankin Sep 2014 #29
I agree with that edhopper Sep 2014 #35
when a nation declares that corporations are people, all bets are off. spanone Sep 2014 #16
Santanyana GeorgeGist Sep 2014 #17
Well, we're already running an empire... Scootaloo Sep 2014 #27
I'm afraid I don't think you're using most of those words to mean what they actually mean. Donald Ian Rankin Sep 2014 #30
CIA's Worst-Kept Secret Octafish Sep 2014 #28
I tend to look at American fascism as evolved. gordianot Sep 2014 #31

socialist_n_TN

(11,481 posts)
1. Well see that's where you're wrong already. America.......
Sun Sep 14, 2014, 06:15 PM
Sep 2014

has already accepted empire. They just don't call it that. Fascism, feudalism or monarchy would also be accepted if it weren't called by those names. America has whole-heartedly accepted the capitalist concept of "rebranding". Rove and the rest of the right wing know this.

Communists won't rebrand though for the most part, so if America accepts communism, it will accept it knowing what it is. I just hope that at some point, the concept of Stalinism is separated from communism.

The Magistrate

(95,237 posts)
5. Well Put, Sir
Sun Sep 14, 2014, 06:26 PM
Sep 2014

We are well along the path to re-establishing hereditary aristocracy in a sort of neo-feudalism, even as we are making a very poor job of the transition from constitutional republic to imperium....

 

AngryAmish

(25,704 posts)
36. In Illinois, the neo-aristocracy is well established.
Mon Sep 15, 2014, 08:04 PM
Sep 2014

There are about 20 families worth more than a billion dollars, Pritzgers merely the most famous and least able to keep their business out of the papers.

There is a lower tier that does their bidding, the Madigans, Daleys (and may I say Rauner and Quinn) who have a prestige analagous to the priests and generals of fuedal germany.

Then there is the rest of us, who pay the bill and get shit on. If I have to pay the bill for one more drunk asshole politician at my club I am gonna kick him or her in the balls. Parasites, the lot

atreides1

(16,046 posts)
3. I disagree with you
Sun Sep 14, 2014, 06:16 PM
Sep 2014

Some Americans will never accept those forms of "government", unfortunately there will always be the Quislings who will.

Louisiana1976

(3,962 posts)
4. Fascism and feudalism can erupt in America today. Remember when the protests in Ferguson,
Sun Sep 14, 2014, 06:23 PM
Sep 2014

Missouri were going on and the police looked and acted like something you'd see in a fascist police state? Now for feudalism. We now have an oligarchy, namely the 1%, who reigns like lords of the manor over the rest of us, their serfs. So I say America can have both.

 

99th_Monkey

(19,326 posts)
6. I notice you fastidiously avoided the term "Oligarchy", which is what USA has become IMHO
Sun Sep 14, 2014, 06:27 PM
Sep 2014
Oligarchy:
Oligarchy (from Greek ὀ??????ί? (oligarkhía); from ὀ?ί??? (olígos), meaning "few", and ἄ??? (arkho), meaning "to rule or to command&quot [1][2][3] is a form of power structure in which power effectively rests with a small number of people. These people could be distinguished by royalty, wealth, family ties, education, corporate, religious or military control. Such states are often controlled by a few prominent families who typically pass their influence from one generation to the next, but inheritance is not a necessary condition for the application of this term.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oligarchy


And I do not see it as a benevolent one, nor do I see it turning around any time soon.
 

99th_Monkey

(19,326 posts)
11. Check it out: Empire - The Rise of the Oligarchs
Sun Sep 14, 2014, 07:27 PM
Sep 2014

This video totally speaks for itself. Tell me again how we "don't need to worry"?

#t=26

Erich Bloodaxe BSN

(14,733 posts)
8. Inoculations can wear off over time.
Sun Sep 14, 2014, 06:36 PM
Sep 2014

Hence the need for 'booster shots'.

Americans will accept all sorts of lousy ideas, as long as those who control the media put on people to tell the populace that what we're doing doesn't 'closely resemble' the sorts of things you claim they'll 'never accept'.

The whole reason there's a need to say things like 'Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it' is that most people do NOT learn from history. And while they might not duplicate a prior setup exactly, they're more than willing to 'ala carte' their way into something that isn't an exact match for specific definitions of fascism, but is close enough in terms of the results upon the populace. Loss of privacy, expectance of adherence to authority, violence by authority to those who protest or resist, allegiance to perpetual military adventurism, and on, and on, and on.

 

hifiguy

(33,688 posts)
9. Mussolini, the founder of fascism
Sun Sep 14, 2014, 06:48 PM
Sep 2014

defined it as the fusion of corporate and governmental power. That precisely describes the modern US. The US is a soft fascist state and has been for a while now.

librechik

(30,663 posts)
32. how soft is a fascism that has the largest prison population in the world
Mon Sep 15, 2014, 01:15 PM
Sep 2014

and mechanisms in place to extort local governments to supply more felons in order to support the private prison industry?

Are we a fascistic police state yet, Daddy? No answer cuz daddy's likely in jail.

 

hifiguy

(33,688 posts)
33. It's "soft" in the sense
Mon Sep 15, 2014, 01:52 PM
Sep 2014

of visible signs of public control. Most of it is done through a M$M that anaesthetize the vast majority of the population and numbs them out while it dumbs them down. There aren't blackshirts or the Gestapo parading around in the streets. People just don't "disappear" like they did in Chile and Argentina.

The for-profit prison system exists to make money, not exterminate people.

Methodologies of controlling a mass populace have become far more sophisticated than those available to Mussolini and Goebbels.

The proper term for what the US has become is "inverted totalitarianism": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism

- snip -

According to Wolin, there are three main ways in which inverted totalitarianism is the inverted form of classical totalitarianism.

Whereas in Nazi Germany the state dominated economic actors, in inverted totalitarianism, corporations through political contributions and lobbying, dominate the United States, with the government acting as the servant of large corporations. This is considered "normal" rather than corrupt.[7]
While the Nazi regime aimed at the constant political mobilization of the population, with its Nuremberg rallies, Hitler Youth, and so on, inverted totalitarianism aims for the mass of the population to be in a persistent state of political apathy. The only type of political activity expected or desired from the citizenry is voting. Low electoral turnouts are favorably received as an indication that the bulk of the population has given up hope that the government will ever help them.[8] While the Nazis openly mocked democracy, the United States maintains the conceit that it is the model of democracy for the whole world.[9] Wolin writes:

Inverted totalitarianism reverses things. It is all politics all of the time but a politics largely untempered by the political. Party squabbles are occasionally on public display, and there is a frantic and continuous politics among factions of the party, interest groups, competing corporate powers, and rival media concerns. And there is, of course, the culminating moment of national elections when the attention of the nation is required to make a choice of personalities rather than a choice between alternatives. What is absent is the political, the commitment to finding where the common good lies amidst the welter of well-financed, highly organized, single-minded interests rabidly seeking governmental favors and overwhelming the practices of representative government and public administration by a sea of cash.

 

L0oniX

(31,493 posts)
10. FFS ...so The most important lessons are the ones we'll get sometime in the future? Ok.
Sun Sep 14, 2014, 06:53 PM
Sep 2014
The most important lessons are precisely the ones that cannot be learned from history.


MFrohike

(1,980 posts)
13. Wee
Sun Sep 14, 2014, 07:56 PM
Sep 2014

This is pretty funny. The assumption that underlies it, that bodies politic literally resemble bodies actual, is just wrong. If a country could somehow inoculate itself against a particular ideology just by some kind of contact with it, racism would have died after 5 minutes after WW2 if not the Civil War. Given that, I find it difficult to consider your proposition to be remotely serious.

As for the various ideologies you listed, they're all really different labels for variations on the same theme: despotism. What you call it is really only of interest to the historians who will later study it. The people on the ground at the time will recognize that there's no damn difference between them if you're on the wrong end of the stick.

Nye Bevan

(25,406 posts)
18. Are you planning to cast a vote in November?
Sun Sep 14, 2014, 09:41 PM
Sep 2014

And did all of the rich folks get together and decide they wanted Obama to beat Mitt Romney, because they wanted higher taxes?

Donald Ian Rankin

(13,598 posts)
20. We don't yet have a word for it.
Mon Sep 15, 2014, 03:02 AM
Sep 2014

It wouldn't look anything like either America today (which is a functioning, albeit imperfect, democracy) or like a fascist state (in which no-one except the government, rich, corporate or otherwise) has a say.

On edit: I'm talking nonsense, there is a word for it - "plutocracy".

edhopper

(33,202 posts)
21. okay
Mon Sep 15, 2014, 08:36 AM
Sep 2014

Then you are saying we are fucked up here, just not a fascist state under the true definition of it?

Though the Princeton study does say this:

(in which no-one except the government, rich, corporate or otherwise) has a say.

Donald Ian Rankin

(13,598 posts)
22. I'm saying you're less fucked up than most of the rest of the world, but not perfect.
Mon Sep 15, 2014, 12:14 PM
Sep 2014

And that you're not a fascist state under any conceivable sane definition of fascism, or even under most insane ones (e.g. Laurence Britt's, which was deliberately constructed to try to pretend America is fascist, and still doesn't fit terribly well).

edhopper

(33,202 posts)
24. We are more fucked up
Mon Sep 15, 2014, 12:16 PM
Sep 2014

than most Western countries in allowing corporate influence and treatment of the middle and lower classes.

edhopper

(33,202 posts)
26. I compare us the countries
Mon Sep 15, 2014, 12:21 PM
Sep 2014

who have the same resources and economic strength, not impoverished third world nations or brutal dictatorships.

Saying we are better than Somalia or Yemen is worthless.

Donald Ian Rankin

(13,598 posts)
29. I think you have cause and effect at least partly backwards there.
Mon Sep 15, 2014, 12:36 PM
Sep 2014

Part - although only part - of the reason that the "Western" countries - America, Western Europe, Japan, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, etc - have stronger economies is that they have more functional political systems.

Also, China is an obvious example of a country with immense economic muscle but a very disfunctional political system, and hence also massive poverty.

edhopper

(33,202 posts)
35. I agree with that
Mon Sep 15, 2014, 07:47 PM
Sep 2014

but with the influence being concentrated with the wealthy and corporations, that functional political system is slipping away and being replaced by an oligarchy. Our political system is becoming dysfunctional through unlimited political donations, gerrymandering and corruption.

 

Scootaloo

(25,699 posts)
27. Well, we're already running an empire...
Mon Sep 15, 2014, 12:23 PM
Sep 2014

So you're wrong right out the gate.

Fascism and feudalism are already part of the American fabric - not dominant, but well-woven into our history all the way to the present day. Communism and monarchy, not so much.

But you know. If it makes you feel better, you keep thinking that America is immune, alone among the nations of the world. Funny thing is that sort of exceptionalism? Is a big factor in fascism

Donald Ian Rankin

(13,598 posts)
30. I'm afraid I don't think you're using most of those words to mean what they actually mean.
Mon Sep 15, 2014, 12:41 PM
Sep 2014

I think you're using pretty much all of them to mean "general bad stuff". If you define them like that then yes, obviously there is a risk of general bad stuff happening

But when I talk about fascism, empire, communism etc, I am using them with fairly specific meanings. Not ridiculously specific ones - I'm not trying to split hairs. But when I say "fascism", I do mean "fascism", not just "generalised bad stuff I don't like".

Yes, America has considerable international influence, which it sometimes uses for unethical purposes. No, that's not the same thing as having an empire.
Yes, some people in America inherit wealth. No, that's not the same thing as feudalism.

Octafish

(55,745 posts)
28. CIA's Worst-Kept Secret
Mon Sep 15, 2014, 12:29 PM
Sep 2014

By Martin A. Lee
May 16, 2001

"Honest and idealist ... enjoys good food and wine ... unprejudiced mind..."

That's how a 1952 Central Intelligence Agency assessment described Nazi ideologue Emil Augsburg, an officer at the infamous Wannsee Institute, the SS think tank involved in planning the Final Solution. Augsburg's SS unit performed "special duties," a euphemism for exterminating Jews and other "undesirables" during the Second World War.

Although he was wanted in Poland for war crimes, Augsburg managed to ingratiate himself with the U.S. CIA, which employed him in the late 1940s as an expert on Soviet affairs.

Recently released CIA records indicate that Augsburg was among a rogue's gallery of Nazi war criminals recruited by U.S. intelligence shortly after Germany surrendered to the Allies.

Pried loose by Congress, which passed the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act three years ago, a long-hidden trove of once-classified CIA documents confirms one of the worst-kept secrets of the Cold War – the CIA's use of an extensive Nazi spy network to wage a clandestine campaign against the Soviet Union.

The CIA reports show that U.S. officials knew they were subsidizing numerous Third Reich veterans who had committed horrible crimes against humanity, but these atrocities were overlooked as the anti-Communist crusade acquired its own momentum. For Nazis who would otherwise have been charged with war crimes, signing on with American intelligence enabled them to avoid a prison term.

"The real winners of the Cold War were Nazi war criminals, many of whom were able to escape justice because the East and West became so rapidly focused after the war on challenging each other," says Eli Rosenbaum, director of the Justice Department's Office of Special Investigations and America's chief Nazi hunter.

CONTINUED...

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2001/051601a.html

gordianot

(15,226 posts)
31. I tend to look at American fascism as evolved.
Mon Sep 15, 2014, 12:47 PM
Sep 2014

To the trendy fascist uniforms and brown shirts are out as a matter of fact if you have a uniform while busting heads, cover the badge make your whole outfit look utilitarian military as little insignia and identification as possible. Never bar people from voting just create long lines. No reason to tax people just set up the system with outrageous fines. Forget Propaganda Ministry use corporate propaganda. Why bother creating some mystery pseudo religion use existing religion and wrap it up with patriotism. Never admit your real aims in public always deny that you are Fascist.

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