[lbo-talk] USA 2003

Alan Jacobson alanjacobson at sbcglobal.net
Mon Sep 15 11:49:41 PDT 2003


Fascism was fundamentally a product of the revolutionary period after WWI, I don't think the particular building blocks that created the fascist movements in Germany, Italy, Spain, (and the wannabes in other countries) will come together the same way again. Germany of 1932 was the product of 1921-3 and 1917-8; there's no point in looking for that here.

"Fascism" in the US will be with a smile and a slap on the back, rather than jackboots. It will call people to look to non-democratic institutions to supplant (nominally) democratic ones, which in the American context would be fundamentally anti-statist in its rhetoric. And it will have a large dose of Protestant religious imagery, redemption and purification, but the means to that purification will be the fascist agency. I hesitate to see that as a "party" but more as an anti-party, organizing people politically _against_ politics, if that makes any sense.

I think people can look and honestly see components in US politics and culture that could facilitate a fascist movement. But that doesn't a fascist movement make. If enough things go wrong, some of these elements could coalesce into something really bad. Having said that, I'd rather not give Cheney, Ashcroft and Rumsfeld another four years to test this theory.

Alan J



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