npchilds at connect.ab.ca wrote:
>
> I'd suggest that with the 'Enemies List', Plumbers, using the IRS to
> harass opponents and Chuck Colson talking about firebombing the Brookings
> Institute the US was a lot closer to Nazism that many would believe.
>
I've made this objection before on various lists, but it seems worthwhile to make it again.
Nazism & fascism were _species_ of the genus "authoritarian state" or "tyranny." At the time, they were _new_ species of this genus, and one of the serious misunderstandings of them at the time came from attempting to identify them with earlier species (e.g., bonapartism) of that genus.
Using those categories (national socialism or fascism) to understand _today's_ threats may be equally disastrous. It would be very possible for the U.S. to become a ruthless police state _and still no more be "fascist" than the fascists were royalists_.
The labels "fascist" and "nazi" are intellectual obstructions: they deflect attention from the real dangers (which might be quite different from past dangers). One of the things one ought to be able to "learn" from history is that in fact it never repeats itself except in ways that only after the fact can be recognized as repetitions, because they were so totally different in their specific features.
Just because pens and crayons are both writing tools doesn't make a charcoal stick a Bic pen.
Carrol