What Would Fascism Look Like in America Today?

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Some aspects of Nazism and Italian Fascism were tied to the innovations, reactions, prejudices, and concerns of their place and era. I think the fascist spirit would look somewhat different in the United States in 2010.

• Scapegoating: Targets of scapegoating would be less the Jews and Bolsheviks and more the Muslims, gay people, and the "liberal elite."
• Aggressive nationalism: Instead of a need to expand in imperial conquest, we'll see a desire to defend military spending to "support our troops" and fight "the war on terror."
• A contempt for democracy: We'll see claims that direct election of senators is a bad idea.

i mean if you watch the news we are already living in that reality.

The anti-democracy of the American Right goes further. Setting aside the whole "we're not a democracy, we're a constitutional republic" talk that conveniently got going as soon as the Soviet Union disappeared, there's talk of bringing back neo-Confederate Jim Crow-type rules (Tom Tancredo's Teabagging convention speech) and vote-suppression has been the centrepiece of the Right's strategy for years. Measures to make it harder to vote is what they do and these lies about illegal immigrants bused in from Mexico to vote. Then there's talk about how only federal income tax filers should get to vote, a weighted vote based on wealth, the delegitimisation of people for whom the poor vote, repetition of that quote expressing fear of the unwashed rabble "voting themselves largesse from the public treasury" and the need to take measures against giving the rabble too much power. Milton Friedman famously spoke of how he thought "economic freedom" was paramount and that it required a politically repressive system to implement so this repression is required in the name of this paramount Freedom...

The 'liberal elite' are the fascists!

Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning
by Jonah Goldberg

http://j.mp/11ZEE5

FDR living to be 100 and being constantly re-elected.

Unbroken, uninterrupted New Deal.

Fascism with an American Face.

ruveyn

Probably not that much different that it is now. We got the corporatism down.

You spend far too much time infighting and calling each other names to really be facist in any sense.

Actually a facist america would be the entire country in one single unilateral agreement on all issues with dissent repressed and persecuted. You don't do that at all you all sound off at each other carry around your little flags and enjoy you pseudo democracy/oligarchy mish mash wacko form of government. When one side feels its being discriminated or victimised or unfairly viewed upon in the mass media you have no problem in expressing such dissent on all those wonderful so called news network propganda machines.

Your politics really suck. You never talk about real issues its as if all of you haven't progressed past kindergarten debating skills. Ad hominem seems to rule the roost.

So basically, Europe comes out tops when it comes to authoritarian dictatorships. Thats why aload of people came to your country in the first place to go and join the great pig argument melting pot of name calling and flag waving.

it beats building extermination and konzentration lagers.

None of our prisons have a sign that says: Arbeit Macht Frei.

ruveyn

Do you think things are that different in the UK?

"A contempt for democracy: We'll see claims that direct election of senators is a bad idea. "

You're referring to Joe Miller I'm guessing. Admittedly, I'm a bit disappointed with his gaffes but he's def one of the better candidates running this cycle. As for the getting rid of the direct election of senators, which would include repealing the 17th amendment, isn't really so much a "contempt of democracy". The original intent of founders was for the house to represent the people and the senate to represent the states. I'm not for repealing the 17th amendment since I think it produces an environment of "you pat my back, I'll pat yours" favors more so than there is now and it would be a lot harder to change the status quo(which I could see how that would be valuable to a young fledgling nation) The positive would be that you'd probably get less of the style over substance politicians.(Obama) Miller backed off that comment later, it's an interesting discussion but I don't see there ever being a big movement to repeal the 17th amendment.

A "contempt of democracy" would be how the democrats have governed the last 2 years, the American public says no and they do it anyways.

Neither do ours now that some neo-nazi scrap metal merchant stole it and cut it into chunks to sell to vacuous supremacists. Recovered, it sits in storage, because if they put it back up some other w*ker will walk off with it so they can bolt it to their bedroom wall and circle-jerk over a short dead Austrian.

The man with the toothbrush mustache. A product of Europe by the way.

ruveyn

Scapegoating as in what? Just ranting about it or do you really think mass extermination would be in order in this day and age after what happened in Europe during WWII? Something in between maybe?



Military spending is by far the lesser part of spending. A hell of a lot more of it gets wasted on social programs and so called "entitlements".
There is a "war on terror" which in my opinion should be perused much more aggressively and be done with it.
Besides, if your not expanding you'd better be defending for the obvious reasons.



Democracy: Two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for lunch.
True liberty is a well armed sheep contesting the vote.

It depends on whom your democracy benefits.

Like America and Americans.

The military gets about 700 billion which is 28 percent of the budget. The rest goes for non-military stuff but very little goes to upgrading or maintaining our infrastructure. So while we are funding cream puffs for the cripples, our bridges will collapse.

ruveyn

I find this kind of rhetoric offensive. In my Asperger's group, we have a woman who has a neurodegenerative disease and is now blind because of it. People generally don't collect disability because they want to live blithely, sucking from the public teat. She actually works very hard to cope with this disability and does not like to rely on hand-outs.