Chip Berlet wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> So the original fascist movements (corporatist, racialist,
> clericalist) arose as a response to interwar tensions
> created by contradictions caused by nationalist capitalism.
>
> OK, that makes sense.
>
> But a number of scholars argue that new forms of
> fascism--neofascisms--have emerged to defend the threatened
> "Volk" against both collectivism (replacing communism with a
> fear of globalist/intrusive government) and the
> nation-smashing pressures of globalization on behalf of
> multinational capital. This takes the form of decrying
> parasitic international finance capital (can Jewish bankers
> be far behind?) and calling for a rebirth of national
> soveriegnty (which can slip into volkish ethnocentrism).
>
This summary (in the whole post) makes sense. Accepting it, at least provisionally, raises for me another question of interest independently from those fascism or right-wing populism. America as a "nation" has always been a bit of an oddity -- first of all since (like all settler colonialisms) its "natives" aren't native, as it were. But then add the racist ideology arising from slavery and the continued oppression of black Americans, the growing population of spanish speaking residents (citizens and non citizens), etc. etc. "volkish ethnocentrism" has to rather violently (in rhetoric and potentially in more physical forms) contradict actual demographics. The "English Only" movement, etc. Clearly this is a seedbed for fascism or neofacism as Chip defines them, but its a complex of elements we have to deal with whether a fascist threat is imminent or not. And some forms of it -- e.g., various religious trends -- cross racial lines. I imagine there are substantial numbers of "non-whites" who respond to the rhetoric of Cal Thompson.
This is all jumbled, but so is the reality, and I think it worth pursuing clarity in it.
Just what constitutes the core of "America" ideologically (in the ideology of American patriotism)?
Carrol