I left off talking about how -- left-wing hyperbole notwithstanding -- our current state couldn't be called fascist per se. We are, however, in danger of a real manifestation of it, particularly if the identifiable proto-fascist elements form a power alliance with the corporatist elements; and secondarily, if this alliance is effected under the aegis of a singular charismatic personality. I mentioned that I would try to tackle the key role of "transmitters" in this process, but a couple of things have happened in the interim that have forced another important component to the fore, and I'd like to tackle it this week: Namely, the role of Bush's professed religiosity and the image, promoted by himself and by the White House, of W. as an instrument of God.
As I mentioned, the Bush regime is clearly comprised of corporatists. A couple of readers wrote in to point out that Mussolini himself described fascism as corporatism in control of the state -- though of course, this is a typically self-serving (for Il Duce) and incomplete definition of fascism, as I've explained previously. Nonetheless, as Matthew Davis wrote in an e-mail:
- Any reasonable definition of 'fascism' should incorporate a corporatist component--both Mussolini and Franco (and certainly Hitler, who's not really a pure Fascist) were big on running their country for the benefit of corporate elites, at the expense of labor (sound familiar?). They occupied a grey area where industry wasn't the direct property of the state, but maintained a hand-in-glove symbiosis. The U.S. under Bush isn't quite as tight with industry, but it ain't that far off, either.
However, I think it's important to point out that much of what prevents the current regime from being defined by any reasonable measure as 'fascist' is the extent to which it resorts to thuggery and street violence, or any of the other tactics of threatening initimidation that are associated with genuine fascism -- which so far is not to any great or really appreciable degree. That may, however, be changing.
It's worth observing, of course, that these tactics are favored by the kind of denizens that normally made up the identifiable proto-fascist element in America: namely, the Patriot/militia movement and associated manifestations of right-wing extremism, especially including anti-abortion extremists. And unfortunately, the Bush campaign's apparent alliance with some of these thuggish elements in the Florida debacle indicates that, when push comes to shove, they may be precisely the kind of corporatists who wouldn't hesitate a moment to form an alliance with, and unleash the latent violence of, the Patriots and their ilk. And when that occurs, we will have full-blown fascism on our hands.
Certainly, as I've already pointed out, much of this element clearly identifies with Bush now and could be considered fully part of the Republican electorate, instead of the maverick Reform Party-type voters they may have been eight years ago. The extent to which this identification deepens in the coming years may well determine whether or not this proto-fascist element will blossom further inside the mainstream. Certainly it is clear that it is already deepening in the administration's response to the antiwar protests, and the coalescence of the footsoldiers of the far right behind Bush on this front.
These folks are one of the more significant components of right-wing extremism, because they represent its largest component. Most militias and right-wing extremist organizations typically enjoy a kind of hierarchy: the leaders, the True Believers, and the footsoldiers. The leaders and the True Believers, who remain relatively small in numbers, are unlikely to have shifted over to Bush's camp (though again it's worth noting that even noted white-supremacist leaders announced their support for Bush's candidacy in 2000). On the other hand, it's also become clear that the footsoldiers -- the followers who signed up for militia duty when Clinton was in office, but who don't see the threat now that Bush is running the show -- are fully in the Republican camp now.
The meeting ground of so much of this far-right ideology with mainstream conservatism has for the previous eight years been mostly in the Clinton-hating pursuit of the last duly-elected president. But now, with Bush in office, the field is shifting. The new meeting ground is fundamentalist Christianity, and particularly its role in the post-Sept. 11 environment and the Bush presidency.
Most Patriot footsoldiers I encountered were fundamentalist Christians of some kind. (True Believers, on the other hand, had a tendency toward either a military background or a fetish about all things soldierly, and were actually more likely to be agnostic, though of course they could provide great lip service to fundamentalist sentiments.) In some cases, the brand of religion they practiced was white-supremacist Identity, which actually is a particularly virulent strain of fundamentalism. Indeed, I've argued elsewhere that Identity in many ways is the logical outcome of the doctrine of Biblical inerrancy that in so many ways forms the core of fundamentalism.
In most cases, though, Patriot followers tended to subscribe to various forms of more generic fundamentalism, especially the culturally conservative style favored by Southern Baptists, as well as the Pat Robertsons and Jerry Falwells out there evangelizing on television. Of course, Robertson himself is noted for promoting Patriotesque "New World Order" conspiracy theories himself, and Falwell's "Clinton Conspiracy" ventures were extraordinarily popular among the militia set as well.
The ties binding President Bush in with this sector have seen some significant developments in recent weeks:
-- First were the reports that came leaking out of the annual Conservative Political Action Conference in Crystal City, Va., earlier this month:
- Rev. Lou Sheldon, the founder of the Traditional Values Coalition and sworn enemy of homosexuality, put it best. Asked if Bush was in sync with his agenda, he replied, "George Bush is our agenda!"
It's important to note what the atmosphere was like at the CPAC gathering: The Clinton-hate remains palpable and is an important trigger topic, but the focus has shifted to two topics: first, the utter demonization of all things liberal, with a rising quota of eliminationist rhetoric; and an exaltation of all things Bush, with a heavy emphasis on the Christian aspect of his "character" and the clear implication of divine Providence in his presidency.
CPAC is an important conjunction of the mainstream and extremist right, so it's very instructive to see the commingling of ideologies at its gathering. Back when I was posting on the conference earlier, a skeptical reader wrote to pose a pertinent question:
- My secretary took a couple of days off last week to go to the CPAC convention and she's not particularly religious, not a theocrat by any means or Patriot-type, just a mainstream conservative, so I am more than a little confused by your claims about CPAC.
This is, of course, the entire point: Gatherings like CPAC give a broad range of extremists, posing as ordinary Joes or Limbaughite loudmouths, the opportunity to spread their radical ideas among the whole sector of mainstream conservatism. Unassuming conservatives go to these gatherings and come away at least exposed to, if not outright converted to, some of these extremist beliefs. That's how these ideas eventually gain circulation among the broader population, often dressed up in a nice Republican cloth coat.
-- Next was Bush's relatively mundane appearance before the National Religious Broadcasters in which he touted his 'faith-based initiatives.' What was noteworthy was that at the same conference, the NRB's president, Glenn Plummer, delivered a scathing attack on Islam, denouncing it as a 'pagan religion' -- which is the kind of talk the Bush team has, up till now, done an admirable job of countering. (Recall that Bush chastised both Falwell and Robertson for similar loose talk in early December.) After all, much of the president's war coalition depends upon Islamic allies, and moreover, an Islam-vs.-West cultural conflict is precisely the trap Osama bin Laden has laid for us. But Plummer's remarks received neither rebuke nor demurral from the White House.
-- Then, there have been a spate of stories describing Bush's religiosity, notably this one from the Baltimore Sun:
Christ-centered course of faith-based president worries some
- At the same time, Bush's stepped-up efforts to express his faith coincide with a White House drive to court religious conservatives in advance of the president's 2004 re-election campaign.
The president's top political adviser, Karl Rove, has concluded up to 4 million Christian conservatives who probably would have voted for Bush instead stayed home in the 2000 election. Rove said a year ago that "we have to spend a lot of time and energy" drawing them back into politics.
Of course, we've discussed previously Bush's predilection for seeing himself in a messianic light. I was particularly struck by the passage from ex-speechwriter David Frum's book about Bush, mentioned in the Progressive piece at the last link:
- That Bush believes he was assigned the Presidency from on high comes through in another passage of Frum's book. After Bush's September 20, 2001, speech to Congress, Gerson called up the President to compliment him: "Mr. President, when I saw you on television, I thought--God wanted you there," Gerson said, according to Frum.
"He wants us all here, Gerson," the President responded, according to Frum.
It's clear that not only does Bush see himself as a man on a divine mission, but he actively cultivates this view of his importance among his staff. Moreover, the White House similarly promotes this image to the public, particularly among conservative Christians.
It's important to note that the White House has been very secretive about the nature of Bush's relationship with the religious right. Indeed, his pre-election overtures to the fundamentalists were specifically kept under wraps. It was something that should have been noticed and uncovered at the time, but everyone was too busy unearthing Al Gore "lies."
I'm thinking specifically of Skipp Porteous' work at the (apparently now-defunct) Institute for First Amendment Studies. Skipp attempted to find out just what Bush was saying at one of the meetings where many of us suspect he was promising to carry out their agenda once elected -- specifically, a meeting of the Council for National Policy in 1999:
- To find out what the Republican candidate for president had to say to such a group, the Institute for First Amendment Studies (IFAS) ordered a set of audiotapes of the sessions. Using an approach that had worked several times in the past – tapes are available to members only – the tapes finally arrived, sans the Bush speech.
IFAS contacted Skynet Media, the recording company hired to record CNP meetings. IFAS then learned that it wasn't the fanatically secretive CNP that decided to delete the Bush tape from the package – the deletion was done on direct order from the Bush campaign. When asked if they actually have the Bush tape, Skynet spokesperson Curt Morse said, "We do," and also noted it wasn't available at any price.
When asked about Bush's speech at CNP, Scott Sforca, a press officer for the George W. Bush for President campaign office, claimed that the meeting "doesn't ring a bell" with him.
When contacted by The New York Times, CNP executive director Blackwell put it as follows: "[T]he Bush entourage said they preferred that the tape[s] not go out, though I could not see any reason why they shouldn't." Blackwell claims that it was a standard speech that he had heard before and since.
Ari Fleischer, a Bush campaign spokesman, told The Times that if anyone was "hoping to hear something that the governor would say that he hasn't said publicly, then they're on a wild goose chase." Fleischer declined to characterize the speech, but said, "When we go to meetings that are private, they remain private." He added, "As far as we know, there is no tape."
Of course, any reporter worth their salt would recognize that Fleischer is baldly lying. If it's only a mundane speech, then what's the secrecy? Why not just let journalists listen to it?
[Sure. I know the answer. The same one you get to the question: Why doesn't he just release his military records?]
The sum of all this identification of Bush with a Divine Agenda -- which has reached such heights that now they're even organizing fasts for Bush -- is especially troubling in light of the presence of a proto-fascist element within the ranks of those who openly and avidly support him. While Bush himself may not be charismatic in any kind of classic sense, his adoption of this image may be an effective substitute for rallying a fanatical following, especially in a time of war.
This has been driven home in the past week as the rhetoric identifying antiwar dissent as "treason" has reached new levels, as has the open use of thuggery to silence dissent.
The essence of this mindset is the concept, described by John Burns in his excellent letter, of "a law beyond the law":
- Even without the threat of punishment, every violation of the goals towards which the community is striving is wrong per se. As a result, the law gives up all claim to be the sole source for determining right and wrong. What is right may be learned not only from the law but also from the concept of justice which lies behind the law and may not have found perfect expression in the law.
This very concept is now being circulated by none other than Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. The upshot, I'm afraid, is that the Supreme Court itself is in danger of aligning itself explicitly with the open use of such thuggery as may be necessary to maintain power.
Dave Johnson really brought this to my attention with this post at Seeing the Forest, which directed us to a May 2002 piece by Scalia:
God's Justice and Ours
As Johnson correctly sums up:
- Scalia appears to think that the way to identify legitimate God-chosen leaders is when they seize power in conflict, demonstrating that God chose them over others. He writes,
- "These passages from Romans represent the consensus of Western thought until very recent times. Not just of Christian or religious thought, but of secular thought regarding the powers of the state. That consensus has been upset, I think, by the emergence of democracy. It is easy to see the hand of the Almighty behind rulers whose forebears, in the dim mists of history, were supposedly anointed by God, or who at least obtained their thrones in awful and unpredictable battles whose outcome was determined by the Lord of Hosts, that is, the Lord of Armies. It is much more difficult to see the hand of God—or any higher moral authority—behind the fools and rogues (as the losers would have it) whom we ourselves elect to do our own will. How can their power to avenge—to vindicate the “public order”—be any greater than our own?"
Under the legal theory Scalia now seems to advocate, a Bush administration that saw itself on a divine mission might find some justification for refusing to relinquish the reins of power to a Democratic election winner in 2004. With the backing of Patriot thugs who shout down political dissenters, and a devotedly pro-Bush military, it would not be hard to imagine who would be most likely to lay claim to being the "hand of God" and thereby winning Scalia's proclamation as the nation's true ruler, mere democracy notwithstanding.
This is not to suggest that such an unthinkable scenario is being plotted by the administration. But when the rhetoric starts inviting thuggery, the equation changes dramatically. And events have a way of piling upon themselves inevitably. After all, who could have foreseen the sequence that brought us Bush v. Gore?
That ruling was, in many ways, a harbinger, in that it represented a similar capitulation to thuggish, proto-fascist elements. Recall, if you will, that it is a unique ruling in that it has virtually no defenders or supporters outside of a tiny clique centered around the arguments offered by Richard Posner. And the essence of Posner's defense of Bush v. Gore is that, yes, legally it may have been a thoroughly unsound ruling, but the court was acting in a practical sense by settling the election decisively, because otherwise incipient social chaos threatened. It was, you see, justice, not the law.
Of course, as it happened, the only sector of the country that was likely at the time to enact any widespread social chaos was the extremist right -- the same Freepers and Patriots who are now threatening to string up anyone who questions the Divine President's war plans.
I promise: Next I will discuss how "transmitters" like Rush Limbaugh and the Free Republic make this all happen. They're the straws who stir the pot.
_____
Here's the rest of the series:
Rush, Newspeak and fascism: Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5.
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