(For the current rightwing "movement") the means -- that is, the obtaining of power -- became the end. And once the movement became centered around obtaining power, by any means necessary, then ideology became fungible according to the needs of its drive to acquire power, just as it was with fascism. This virtually guaranteed it would become a travesty of its original purpose. The nature of today's "conservative movement" is no more apparent than in how distinctly un-conservative its actual conduct has been: busting budgets, falling asleep at the wheel of national security, engaging wars recklessly and without adequate planning.
Two things occurred to the conservative movement in this drive for power:
-- It increasingly viewed liberals not merely as competitors but as unacceptable partners in the liberal-conservative power-sharing agreement that has been in place since at least the New Deal and the rise of modern consumer society. Ultimately, this view metastacizes into seeing liberals as objects to be eliminated.
-- It became increasingly willing to countenance ideological and practical bridges with certain factions of the extremist right. This ranged from anti-abortion and religious-right extremists to the neo-Confederates who dominate Republican politics in the South to factions of the Patriot/militia movement.
The combination of these two forces exerted a powerful rightward pull on the movement, to the point where extremist ideas and agendas have increasingly been adopted by the mainstream right, flowing into an eliminationist hatred of liberalism. In the process, their own rhetoric has come to sound like that on the far right. A lot of the dabbling in far-right memes has been gratuitous, intended to "push the envelope" for talk-radio audiences in constant need of fresh outrageousness.
Fully enabled, free of any of the traditional checks on its power, by the earth-shaking effects of Sept. 11, the movement morphed into a genuinely radical force. And in its outward shape, it has come to resemble fascism, particularly in the way it has adopted nearly all of the "mobilizing passions" of fascism to some degree, whether greater or lesser.
But at its core, it is not fascism. At least not yet. Remember Paxton's rather clear description of fascism in the context of the history of ideologies: it is, in essence, "dictatorship against the Left amidst popular enthusiasm." Well, there can be little doubt of its overt anti-leftism; increasingly the mainstream right's entire raison d'etre is, in Mussolini's phrase, "to break the bones of the Democrats of Il Mundo". But it is not yet a dictatorship, though the conservative movement's efforts to create a one-party state approach that. Neither does it enjoy true popular enthusiasm. Sure, they have a sizeable and boisterous following, and their increasing conversion of mass media to a propaganda arm of the right is a serious problem that does not bode well for stopping them from actually gaining a majority following.
Put it this way: The fact that nearly half the country is willing to endorse the manifest incompetence of a man like George W. Bush, by returning him to the Oval Office for another four years, is not a good sign in this regard. The remarkable levels of delusion and misinformation among Bush supporters is another confirmation that this is not a healthy political milieu.
At every step, rather than disconfirming the trend, the Bush White House confirms it. First we have the Bush campaign's bizarre authoritarian behavior surrounding his public appearances. Non-Bush supporters (and even those deemed insufficiently supportive) are prevented from entering, and even ostensibly neutral messages like "Protect Our Civil Liberties" are cause for being ejected and threatened with arrest.
Then, Chris Suellentrop at Slate recently uncovered the "Bush Pledge," a pledge of allegiance to Bush himself that thousands of Republicans have apparently taken:
"I want you to stand, raise your right hands," and recite "the Bush Pledge," said Florida state Sen. Ken Pruitt. The assembled mass of about 2,000 in this Treasure Coast town about an hour north of West Palm Beach dutifully rose, arms aloft, and repeated after Pruitt: "I care about freedom and liberty. I care about my family. I care about my country. Because I care, I promise to work hard to re-elect, re-elect George W. Bush as president of the United States."
Billmon (as always) put it best:
The truly sinister thing -- and the reason why that Slate story made the hair stand up on the back of my neck -- is that even as these people move, like sleepwalkers, towards a distinctly American version of the cult of the leader, most of them honestly appear to have no idea what they're doing, or creating. I'm not even sure the Rovians themselves entirely understand the atavistic instincts they've awakened in Bush's most loyal followers. But the current is running now, fast and strong. And we're all heading for the rapids.
Likewise, the continuing trend toward disproportionately ugly and violent behavior related to the election, especially on the part of Bush supporters, and in some cases directly related to the Republican campaigns, is even further cause for concern. Because it is the point at which violence becomes an organizational response that the conservative movement will cease to be pseudo-fascist.
Regardless of the mechanism, Paxton is clear that not only can fascism take root in America, but that it will also take a peculiarly American shape:
The language and symbols of an authentic American fascism would, of course, have little to do with the original European models. They would have to be as familiar and reassurign to loyal Americans as the language and symbols of the original fascisms were familiar and reassuring to many Italians and Germans. No swastikas in American fascism, but Stars and Stripes (or Stars and Bars) and Christian crosses. No fascist salute, but mass recitations of the pledge of allegiance. These symbols contain no whiff of fascism in themselves, of course, but an American fascism would transform them into obligatory litmus tests for detecting the internal enemy.
Around such reassuring language and symbols in the event of some redoubtable setback to national prestige, Americans might support an enterprise of forcible national regeneration, unification, and purification. Its targets would be the First Amendment, separation of Church and State (creches on the lawns, prayers in the schools), efforts to place controls on gun ownership, desecrations of the flag, unassimilated minorities, artistic license, dissident and unusual behavior of all sorts that could be labeled antinational or decadent.
It's worth observing, of course, that nearly all of these themes have played significant roles in the campaign waged by the conservative movement in 2004 -- particularly in the monumental attacks on gays and lesbians under the pretense of stopping gay marriage, coinciding with a de facto antagonism to church-state separation, represented by the Republican National Committee's hiring of David Barton, a noted anti-separation extremist, as a campaign consultant and speaker at RNC events.
What's still lacking, however, from the basic recipe for genuine fascism is the emergence of a genuine crisis of democracy. Unfortunately, because of the extreme volatility of the political environment, the potential for such a crisis erupting exists regardless of whatever among the likely scenarios plays out in Tuesday's election:
Bush wins legitimately and cleanly. Under this scenario, the conservative movement gains a death grip on the reins of power. Democrats will be gerrymandered and maneuvered into meaninglessness, paving the way for an essentially one-party state. And unencumbered by the need to win re-election, as well as empowered by an actual mandate, Bush's radical social and political agenda will begin to take effect. Democratic institutions across the board will suffer.
Kerry wins cleanly. In this event, there will continue to be heated opposition to any reforms he might attempt, waged often through the propaganda organs of the mainstream press. There will be continuous claims that Kerry won illegitimately. Moreover, the True Believers of the conservative movement -- many of whom have become radicalized to an unusual level over the course of the campaign -- will act out their resistance to a Kerry regime violently. Expect a sharp spike in domestic terrorism, and further divisiveness from the conservative movement, much of it centered around Kerry's supposed "treasonousness." Expect the rhetoric to become truly violent when the debate focuses on the United Nations.
Bush maintains power illegitimately. This is the most potentially troubling of the scenarios. Considering their manifest willingness to do anything to win -- even litigate their way into the White House in the face of a popular-vote loss -- the Bush campaign is nearly limitless in what it will attempt to maintain its hold on power this year. This may range from massive lawsuits contesting election results because of alleged "voter fraud" in heavily minority precincts, to resorting to Republican state legislatures overriding the outcome of their elections (if pro-Kerry) and selecting in their place a Republican slate of electors -- a decidedly possible outcome, since the Supreme Court made clear in the 2000 Florida debacle that legislatures had the right to do this. Recall, if you will, Antonin Scalia's chilling remark: "There is no right of suffrage under Article II," meaning, there is no constitutional right to vote for president.
Major terrorist attacks occur during the election. As Richard Hasen pointed out in Slate, this is "the true nightmare scenario": An attack on a major city in a battleground state could prevent thousands, even millions of voters from making it to the polls, triggering a political and legal fight over how to handle the matter afterward. It's worth noting, of course, that not only are Oklahoma City-style domestic terrorists the potential perpetrators of such acts, they are, under the current charged milieu, those most likely. But if such an attack does occur, the presumptive suspects of course will be al Qaeda.
Of course, terrorist attacks needn't occur only on Election Day to have a potentially profound impact on American society. Indeed, if they are severe or frequent enough, it is clear that they would clearly represent a continuing source of crisis for democracy. Regardless of the outcome of Tuesday's vote, the power of terrorism to spark such a crisis remains profound.
In other words, it's clear that the "crisis of democracy" necessary to create a genuinely fascist dynamic is a real potential that lies around many corners on our current path. The key, then, is to finding the path that does not take us there.
If fascism is indeed latent in our political landscape and rising to the surface, then the critical question becomes this: How do we prevent it from doing so?
First, it's important to understand the conditions under which fascism's attempts to take root and gain power have failed. I described some of these in Part IV of "Rush, Newspeak, and Fascism," referencing Paxton's work on the failure of French fascism. Put briefly, fascism only obtained power by forming alliances with mainstream conservatives -- and there was no "political space" for that in France. The same, I explained, was true of the previous failure of American fascism:
Fascism as a political force suffered from the same sort of bad timing in the United States when it arose in the 1920s -- conservatives were in power and had no need of an alliance with fascism, and there was no great social crisis. When it re-arose in the 1930s, the ascendance of power-sharing liberalism that was as popular in rural areas as in urban, again left fascism little breathing room.
And in the 1990s, when proto-fascism re-emerged as popular movement in the form of the Patriots, conservatives once again enjoyed a considerable power base, having control of the Congress, and little incentive to share power. Moreover, the economy was booming -- except in rural America.
What the current pseudo-fascist phenomenon represents is a different kind of mechanism, one in which the political space is created not apart from the major parties, but from within one of them -- the one that had been traditionally hospitable to the traits that constitute fascism. This tendency dates back to the days of the America First Committee.
This tendency has finally metastacized into a genuinely dangerous situation, one in which the GOP has become host to a Stalinist movement that exhibits so many of the traits of fascism that the resemblance is now unmistakable.
This means a complete reconfiguration of the calculations of any "political space" that might be created by a serious crisis of American democracy. Instead of creating an opportunity for a fascist movement to gain legitimacy through an alliance with conservatives, what such a crisis instead creates is a situation in which the latent fascist elements come to the surface and, in turn, come to dominate the nature of a party already in power.
This makes any potential for a crisis of democracy potentially more dangerous in terms of the opening it creares for fascism, because it can manifest itself much more rapidly, and without any requisite shift in the political space. This is especially the case for an entity like the conservative movement, which already in so many ways dominates the American political landscape now.
By far, of the potential scenarios for a crisis of democratic institutions outlined above, the most likely to produce a real outbreak of fascism is the third one, in which Bush again takes charge of the Oval Office through litigation or some other abrogation of the norms of democratic rule. If it happens a second time -- and particularly if Bush does so by once again disenfranchising voters -- then there will be a strong, perhaps violent reaction from the left, who will have (quite rationally) come to the conclusion that Bush and his regime not only have no respect for democratic institutions, but that they intend to undermine if not destroy them outright.
The danger lies with that reaction, which in this scenario would almost certainly produce mass protests: marches, demonstrations, anti-Bush rallies. These would almost certainly be accompanied by a nominal level of violence: arrests, police confrontations, some provocation-related violence, property damage. This violence would then become justification for violent counters -- the organizational groundwork for which has already been laid in the form of such anti-liberal provocateurs as the Freepers and Protest Warriors.
The reaction to a second Bush term under illegitimate conditions, then, would likely spark a counter-reaction that would manifest condoned, organizational violence, the lack of which is one of the distinguishing characteristics of pseudo-fascism. This is the scenario in which the danger of fascism lies closest to the surface.
The prospects under a Bush-victory scenario are not much brighter: Bush with a mandate will be Bush Unleashed, and the volatility of this election will likely release a lot of pent-up frustrations at liberals, but it's difficult to say how high the levels of violence are likely to be. On the other hand, the conservative movement's totalitarian impulses, particularly in gerrymandering the political system a la Texas, to ensure the GOP's continued political dominance, raise the chilling prospect of, at the very best, a Stalinist/PRI-style one-party state, where every person in the government is first a member of the party. This shift will be more incremental in nature, but there is also bound to be a breaking point at which a cumulative reaction arises against it.
The prospect for a Kerry win is the most promising, but also the most troubling. Certainly the likelihood of large contingent of radicalized, Patriot-style extremists bent on opposing his presidency is a daunting thought, but unfortunately, the extraordinary penetration of the "Kerry is a traitor" meme to a broad segment of the voting population is a certain recipe for producing these kinds of radicals should Kerry in fact win.
On the other hand, there are many indications that the extreme pressures under which the conservative movement has cobbled together its innately limited ruling coalition may in turn cause that coalition to crack apart. As the Washington Monthly recently observed, the gap between the religious right and the neoconservatives who rule the White House roost is growing. Even a Bush victory may not ensure the alliance will hold together, and a Bush loss is highly likely to shatter it.
Indeed, one of the dynamics likely to emerge from a Kerry win will be a split between the "theocons" of the religious right, who appear inclined to form an alliance with the "paleocons" who are agitating for immigration reform, while the neoconservative faction is likely to gravitate in the direction of traditional, non-movement Republicans.
Regardless of which of these outcomes emerges Tuesday and afterward, it is clear that the forces which the conservative movement has put in motion are going to have harmful consequences in the long term, particularly when it comes to attacks on democratic institutions like voting and privacy rights. Even more egregious is the larger harm to the health of the body politic; the divisiveness sown by conservative ideologues is not going away any time soon, regardless of how thoroughly they may be repudiated. If they are not, then it will worsen.
On the meta level, preventing fascism means averting a crisis of democracy, and dismantling the fascist architecture of the conservative movement by repudiating its tenets. If Bush wins, especially illegitimately, that will entail resisting the urge to give in to violence and anger. It will be understandable, of course, but progressives have to understand that it will only fuel a fascist nightmare by giving movement ideologues the pretext to unleash the dogs.
If Kerry wins, we have to be prepared for the backlash that will not need any time to build. Indeed, it is already in place, and it will make the attacks on Bill Clinton look like a walk in the park. It has to be confronted directly; Democrats can no longer afford to presume that their political opponents are willing to play fair by normative rules. A unified, firm and clear response -- especially to the inevitable claims of Kerry's illegitimacy -- has to become the standard of operation instead of an afterthought.
If there is going to be any healing, it will have to begin after the attack style of politics -- in which the smearing an opponent substitutes for the lack of any substance or accomplishment -- has been relegated to the ashheap of history. And that will probably never disappear until the nation's mass media are effectively reformed and the trivialization of the national discourse ceases.
But there is also the personal level at which we have to deal with this as well. As I've discussed previously, the influence of this movement has pervaded our personal lives and relationships as well. Families, longtime friends, and communities are being torn apart by the divisive politics of resentment and accusation that have become the core of the conservative movement's appeal.
One of the realities about coming to terms with fascism is that it is not an immediately demonizing force -- that is, instead, one of its long-term effects. Conservative-movement adherents are still human beings, and seeing them in terms of participating in a kind of fascism should not render them into mere discardable objects. It's much clearer if we understand that many of them are simply responding naturally to the psychological manipulation inherent in the movement's appeal.
Recognizing what we are up against -- namely, a kind of fascism -- is critical to dealing effectively with it, because even if wielding the term in discourse can be unhelpful (it remains a loaded term easily misinterpreted), this model gives us a key to understanding the thought -- or rather, emotive -- processes that are the core of the pseudo-fascist appeal. Getting our opponents to see that, for example, dissent is not treason but patriotism, requires getting them to let go of their preconceptions. It means, in the end, getting them to see us as human beings too. And when we do that, the fascist facade will crumble.
This is, of course, easier said than done. It often is simply impossible. But maintaining this approach, standing firm, and refusing to descend into eye-for-an-eye contemptuousness is, in the end, our only way out of the dark, cavernous maze into which our national politics have descended.
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