FASCISM MUCH WORSE THAN MERE DICTATORSHIP
In order to understand the nature of the problem posed by Operation Obama, it is unavoidable to introduce a discussion of certain features of fascism. It is no coincidence that massive efforts are being undertaken in the current time to obfuscate and confuse popular understanding of what fascism was. One of the most absurd of these attempts is the book Liberal Fascism by the reactionary Republican and neocon Jonah Goldberg, the son of the old reactionary battle axe Lucianne Goldberg, the sponsor of military intelligence figure Linda Tripp during the impeachment campaign against Bill Clinton. Goldberg's doltish thesis is that whenever government intervenes in the economy, fascism results. This idiotic viewpoint would make both Alexander Hamilton and Abraham Lincoln into dyed in the wool goose-steppers. For Goldberg, the essence of fascism in our own time is naturally to be sought in the Franklin D. Roosevelt New Deal -- this despite the fact that the New Deal was a vital factor in the defeat of fascism back here in the real world. Goldberg's book is so grotesque a tissue of distortions that one is forced to conclude that such a hack job must have been ordered up by the intelligence community for the express purpose of disorienting public opinion on this very important question, precisely at the moment when Obama's ascendancy would begin to force many serious and intelligent people to begin rethinking the question of fascism.
For our purposes here, we need to look at fascism most of all as a political phenomenon, and this means fascism as a mass movement. The average American thinks of fascism as a bureaucratic-authoritarian form of police-state dictatorship which becomes more and more oppressive and stifling until it reaches the point where it can be called fascist. The resulting notion of fascism as the extreme form of oppressive top-down dictatorship is a complete and total misconception of how fascism comes about, and one of the most dangerous delusions possible in the current situation. If fascism meant nothing more than tyranny, oppression, dictatorship, and police state, it would never have been necessary to introduce a special new term "fascism" in the years following World War I. Terms like police-state dictatorship would have been more than enough. But fascism was something very different.
FASCISM AS A GRASS-ROOTS MASS MOVEMENT RUN BY BANKERS
Fascism was not what most readers think. In its origins, fascism takes the form of a mass movement. Fascism started as a political protest movement at the grass-roots level, an anti-establishment, anti-authoritarian, and anti-parliamentary movement with radical cover and indeed with left cover. It started in the streets, or better yet, in the gutter. It did not start with bureaucrats issuing arrest warrants from government offices. It started with fervently idealistic young students, and then brutal thugs carrying truncheons, clubs, and firearms on their way to do battle with their political enemies, and quite often with the police. Fascism was an affair of hooligans, goons, gangsters, and fanatics. It was the specialty of ragtag storm troopers. It was the political theater of Mussolini's march on Rome in 1922. The bulk of fascism's forces came from parts of the middle class who had been driven insane by economic crisis and by military defeat, and many were disgruntled war veterans. The rebellious despair of these social groups was the soil from which fascism grew. Of course, after fascism took power it became more and more evident that this radical, grassroots, anti-establishment, anti-politician protest movement had not been spontaneous at all, but had been carefully and artificially orchestrated by the most prominent bankers and their political operatives. Fascism established itself by attacking, harassing, and crushing the main political institutions of society which opposed it, most especially the left wing political parties, trade unions, independent newspapers, and independent organizations of all types.
After it had seized power, fascism tended to eliminate its own radical and mass movement dimensions, sometimes with direct murderous violence, and then to solidify and consolidate itself into a top-down police state dictatorship. But it must not be forgotten that such a relatively stable police state dictatorship could never have been created without the ability of a fascist mass movement first to systematically destroy all forms of organized political resistance inside the society in a way that the police and the secret police simply could not do, in which the army could never have been trusted to undertake. While many scholars focus their attention on the ossified end product of fascism as an accomplished police state dictatorship, for us today it is imperative to understand it in statu nascenti, the beginnings of fascism, as a bottom-up mass movement fomented by bankers in order to mobilize society for economic sacrifice, for fanaticism, and for war.
FASCISM HAD LEFT RADICAL ANTI-ESTABLISHMENT COVER
The radical, anti-establishment, and leftist overtones of fascism may be the hardest for the present day American to grasp. Mussolini, Hitler, Franco, and their ilk appear in retrospect as right wing extremists of the most exasperated type. But it should be recalled that Mussolini in his early career was a socialist, and that even Hitler insisted on calling his movement National Socialism. There was a reason for this, and it was to recruit any and all disaffected anti-establishment and anti-politician forces into the new movement, including those coming from leftist backgrounds, no matter how antithetical and contradictory they might be among themselves. Mussolini and Hitler both claimed to be the real revolution, not the fake revolution that had been manifested as betrayal of the workers by corrupt socialist party and union bosses.
The question of the fascist mass movement is the essential one. Anybody can become an individual fascist anytime they decide to do so. It is fair to say that Bush and Cheney have the mentality of fascists and are fascists, but this should not obscure the fact that they do not have a fascist mass movement and could almost never be capable of creating one. Fascist leaders have to be charismatic, energetic, feral, cunning, brutal, and eloquent. Bush is a class A war criminal, but he could hardly make it as the leader of a fascist mass movement. His shortcomings as an orator are alone sufficient to rule him out. So when Keith Olberman chose to denounce Bush as a fascist just as a number of commentators were beginning to notice the parallels between an Obama rally and a Mussolini balcony speech, we must suspect that this star of the Brzezinski network MSNBC was acting in bad faith, seeking not to educate his viewers about the essence of fascism, but rather seeking to confuse them on this score. The point is that Obama brings together more of the characteristic features of fascism than any other political figure on the U.S. scene, either now or in living memory. This need not mean that Obama represents the culmination or endpoint of fascist development in this country today. Obama may well be the John the Baptist of postmodern fascism, destined to fall by the wayside and be supplanted by a larger figure who may well build on the rage and bitterness of Obama's disappointed followers. It does mean that the Obama candidacy already represents a significant step in the direction of postmodern fascism.
Consider this series of names: Nitti, Giolitti, Bonomi, and Facta. If you do not know who they are, then you should admit to yourself that you know almost nothing about the genesis of Italian fascism in the years following World War I. These are the names of the Italian prime ministers who were in power in the years of economic crisis and national convulsion preceding Mussolini's march on Rome in October 1922. Some of them, most notably Facta, were parliamentary cretins and nonentities. Giolitti, by contrast, was a politician of real substance and merit who had helped Italy develop modern railroads, modern industries, and a modern merchant marine, and who had fought to save his country from the incalculable folly of intervening in World War I on the side of the British and French. Whatever his faults, Giolitti can be considered at the very least as the lesser evil of the Old Order in Italy at that time, in something of the same way that the Clintons would have to be considered as a lesser evil in comparison with Bush the elder, Bob Dole, and Bush the younger. Several years went by after 1922 before most Italians realized that all the governments up to and including Facta had represented one thing, but that the country had gone off a cliff with Mussolini as far as political life and the rule of law were concerned. It was the fascist seizure of power of October 1922 which marked the great point of no return, the great watershed, even though this had not been obvious to many in real time.
