I think that only people who live, as we do, over a half century removed in time and an ocean removed in space from the most fully developed examples of 'eternal fascism' could ask such questions.
I've thought about this issue a bit and, taking the US' full history and present circumstance into account have reached a conclusion: for some classes and groups of people, the US has always shown little else except a repressive, sometimes murderous and, at best, suspicious face.
There are people who are outside the 'profiling zone' such as, at the top tier, Bill Gates and at less elevated levels the middle manager working for AT&T. And then there are other people who are always, despite their best efforts, IN the profiling zone.
At those moments when American democracy, such as it is, begins to dismantle itself out of fear-instilled madness (fear is the mindkiller after all) those inside the profiling zone are picked first for abuse.
A few days after the 11th of September, 2001, an excellent friend, a good natured 50-something White guy - a Vet as it happens - told me that he felt an urge to "beat the shit" out of the Pakistani guy pumping gas into his car at a local gas station.
The man sported an elaborate beard and a turban, hence the visual connection to our newest super-enemy.
You're thinking now, 'this guy, this so-called friend of yours is a racist prick!' Which, considering the brief story I just shared sounds like an accurate assesment.
But he's not. He was scared. Irrationally scared. And there's something more; the Pakistani gas station attendant was always inside the profiling zone but it took the destruction of the WTC to make that hidden fact visible.
Timothy McVeigh, being outside of the profiling zone could blow up a building and be considered a lone nut - a "bad apple." But the suicide/hijackers of the 11th of September, being members of an ethnic group quite firmly within the profiling zone are, to most Americans (particularly Bernard Lewis, 'What Went Wrong" fans) examples of the pathology of a barbarous culture.
Many Arab Americans didn't know they were living in this special zone until the strange and tortured Mr. Ashcroft, sending his cheap-suited minions far and wide started coming for them. Do any FBI agents wear Armani?
An Arab American engineer working for Intel might have driven his 5-series BMW past the scene of a cop getting a bit rough with some homeboy and thought 'well, I don't have THAT problem.' Well yes, not yet. But you're in the zone my friend and, therefore, only one national emergency away from being pulled over yourself.
......
To sum up, there have always been periods of mad (as in hatter) repression in the US. Usually the targets are people who are targeted anyway - only now there appears to be a 'good' excuse to do so with abandon.
The Bush administration may be unusual in its fondness for authoritarian forms and certainly this means real danger for targeted groups. Even so, this country has not yet, I think, reached that particular sort of no return point which leads to compulsory mass rallies, arrest for posting to LBOTalk and other things you'd expect from a truly fascist regime.
I'll say goodbye (for now) with a quote from HL Mencken, that racist, mysoginist, anti-semitic prick who wrote sentences of startling clarity. In the latest issue of 'The Baffler', there's a fascinating reappraisal of Mencken, warts and all, titled "In Memoriam: HLM" written by David Raeburn.
Mencken wrote:
One cannot observe [democracy] without being impressed by its curious distrust of itself - its apparently ineradicable tendency to abandon its whole philosophy at the first sign of strain. I need not point to what happens invariably in democratic states when the national safety is menaced. All the great tribunes of democracy, on such occasions, convert themselves, by a process as simple as simple as taking a deep breath, into despots of an almost fabulous ferocity. Nor is this process confined to times of alarm and terror: it is going on day in an day out. Democracy always seems bent on killing the thing it theoretically loves.
....
Note that this was written about 75 years ago.
DRM
__________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com