My take on it is that American fascism is an extremist outgrowth of populism, and a natural development of extending the voting franchise to non-elite white men in the 19th century.
Say what?? I can see an argument for a historical connection between democracy and fascism (I would argue against a tight causal connection) but I find it hard to imagine how you insert the word "natural" in that sentence.
Let me see if I can rephrase the argument and expand the social improvement beyond the franchise to "more equality" (which gets us a bit closer to LindyBill's lamenting the successes of the civil rights movement. If you are saying that as minorities get the vote and as barriers to social mobility decline they move up, that, in turn, produces a reaction from the formerly privileged, I'm with you. You can see that in the US right now both as pertains to African Americans and as pertains to women of any color.
The connection between that and populism (and on into fascism) is a bit more difficult. Remember that populism came in many stripes. One rendition of it appears in C Vann Woodward's wonderful book about the Georgia politician (name escapes me as I type) who began his career as a class oriented politician (bringing working class whites and blacks together into the same movement, something the Wobblies did as well), discovered it was going nowhere so he began mobilizing along racial lines. Thus, these two forms of populism ran alongside one another, even in the south, let alone the north. Father Coughlin is not the paradigm of populism.
I think that story makes the connection between social reaction and fascism problematic.
Moreoever, it might well be that in American history (I haven't really thought about this one) populist movements of the racist variety paralleled populist movements of the class kind because the economic conditions which favored each were much the same.
Then how about the connection between fascism and democracy? Chile is an interesting counter example. Allende is elected, the military can't take it, draws on US resources, does a coup against Allende, and we have fascism. Hard to say there is a connection there. One can argue about Germany that the connection was via a coup in the 30s but the social basis for the coup was grounded in economic despair.
As for the populism of the moment, it's power, at the moment, arises from the willingness of the Republican party to walk the dark side of American politics by forming an alliance with the Ralph Reeds of the world. And, also, not coincidentally, by the successes of minority groups and of women of all colors, which gives a focus for the grievances of white males. Hardly an over extension of the civil rights movement. Just more of the personal and social sickness personified by the anger one sees in white males when their bosses are not other white males.
John |
