The New N at zi$m

[Gordon Fitch]

Chip Berlet:
> Well, Charles, we actually agree. The potential danger of fascism in periods
> such as we live in is something that needs to be considered. But what I am
> arguing is that fascism is more than just top down authoritarian rule, and
> that the new scholarship on fascism, despite many variations, is that for it
> to come to state power, there needs to be a sizeable autonomous middle class
> populist movement clamoring for the regime to be replaced.
> ...

Suppose something different happened in the United States
from anything we've observed before, however -- say, the
establishment of a totalitarian regime not at the behest of
an autonomous middle-class movement, but in the space provided
by a very passive middle class, and energized not by such a
movement but by the very large, very pervasive military and
police-industrial complexes which are now being constructed?
It would be a kind of slow-motion coup d'état.  It seems
to me it would be fascism by another name; in any case, we
need to call it something, because it's pretty clearly out
there in the wings, waiting for its cue.

-- Gordon