I agree that if something like fascism were to appear in the US, which I think improbable, it would likely crystallize around race, unlike in say Italy around 1920, since race is an obsession of Americans and a concept that lends itself to the "us vs. them" element of fascism. However, although I have not spent any significant amount of time in the States in over 7 years and so cannot really judge, as far as I know there are no significant political groupings preaching the doctrine of the Total State, which is the sine qua non of Fascism, if by that term one means anything like what the actual Fascists meant by the term.
--- JBrown72073 at cs.com wrote:
> >Chris Doss
> >Also, racism is not inherently fascist and fascism
> is
> >not inherently racist.
> >
> ^^^^
> >CB: US fascism has been racist, and is racist in
> 2007 ( see the KKK,
> >neo-Confederates, Aryan nation, ultra-rightists).
>
> But Chris, fascism doesn't exist in the abstract, it
> exists in a social and
> political context. I would go farther than Charles
> (maybe) and say that U.S.
> fascism has racism as its outstanding,
> distinguishing characteristic because it
> is THE thing that can get a working-class base
> supporting austerity at home
> and empire abroad. Without it, they got nothing, or
> very little. Now perhaps
> you can forecast the emergence of a more
> sophisticated rainbow fascism in the
> U.S. but the only signs I see of that are attempts
> (fairly unsuccessful so
> far) to get whites and blacks all together hating
> Arabs and Mexicans. But hey,
> there are plenty of 'races' to hate and thus plenty
> of racism to encourage, as
> Primo Levi said, everyone is someone's Jew.
>
> Jenny Brown </HTML>
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