The "F" Word

People get upset if you refer to someone as a fascist. Posting on the politics board over at Beliefnet, I've taken some mild heat lately for referring to our Beloved Leader in that way, and wrote the following justification...

There's been a lot of discussion here about the f-word, a whole thread on it at one time in fact. Many people are understandably upset by it, and there are others who use it inaccurately. For example, adolescent anarchists often use "fascist" as a synonym for "authoritarian."

However, it's a technical political term which refers to a very specific kind of government, whose primary characteristics are institutional bonding of big business with the organs of government, backed by the military establishment. In other words, the oligarchy of the rich (plutocracy) takes over the government, which then uses super-patriotism, hatred of dissenters, and real or imagined foreign threats to keep people worked up in such a fearful emotional state that they don't notice their pockets being picked.

The Nazis were the worst fascists ever, but they were an extreme of extremism. No other fascist party I'm aware of has ever had a policy or program of genocide, although most of them have been very racist. The neocon American fascists are unique in this regard, as IMHO there's no overt racism about them.

But they exhibit all the other fascist traits: feverish nationalism, dislike of unions or any pro-labor legislation, love of militarism and the romanticizing of combat (up to and including "the ultimate sacrifice"), aggressive and unjustifiable invasions of weaker and smaller nations for purposes of empire building, hatred of dissent and attempts to intimidate or silence any and all opposition, and an embrace of the conventional institutionalized forms of popular religion (form without content). Fascists have an inbred hatred of intellectuals, and of any sort of thought, generally.

Even though the neocons control most of the government, they have thus far failed to turn the U.S. into a fascist country. We still have a sometimes-free press and a semi-independent judiciary. But they're working on it.

America has now flirted with fascism, but like most other people in other places, I don't think we have the stomach for it in the long run. It's too dishonest, and sooner or later people notice they're being ripped off.

At least that's what I'm hoping.