The whiff of fascism

I hate to keep sounding like a broken record, but the fascist motifs trickling their way into mainstream Republican politics (which is the focus of the "Rush" essay, of course) are starting to come fast and furious -- at a much faster rate, I'm afraid, than I think most of us anticipated.

I was especially struck by Michelle Goldberg's piece in Salon:

Beautiful young shock troops for Bush

Erickson was followed by Jack Abramoff, a powerful right-wing lobbyist and former College Republican chairman, who exhorted the next generation to fight hard, lest "the ascension of evil, the bad guys, the Bolsheviks, the Democrats return."

That equation -- evil = communist = Democrats -- was nearly axiomatic at the convention. Ann Coulter's latest book, "Treason," which tarred virtually all Democrats as traitors, may have been denounced by conservative intellectuals, but its message has pervaded the party. Gene McDonald, who sold "No Muslims = No Terrorists" bumper stickers at the Conservative Political Action Conference in January, was doing a brisk trade in "Bring Back the Blacklist" T-shirts, mugs and mouse pads. Coulter herself remains wildly popular -- Parker Stephenson, chairman of Ohio College Republicans, calls her "one of my favorite conservative thinkers."

One of the essential traits of fascism, you may recall, is the widespread belief that dissent is treason, "dissent" being anything outside the official party line.

The room filled up again, though, when Warrior, an ex-WWF wrestler who has built a second career as a mascot for the right, took the stage that afternoon. Warrior -- that's his full legal name -- spoke at the Conservative Political Action conference in January, and has been one of the most requested speakers among conservative organizations ever since.

Dressed in a blue pinstriped suit, his long, dirty-blond hair pulled into a ponytail, Warrior explained why he'd left the world of wrestling. "When it became degenerate and perverted," he said, "I dismissed myself from pursuing it as a career anymore."

The speech that followed contained references to thinkers from Socrates to Tom Paine, and perhaps it would require a scholar of the classics to discern its meaning. "America was founded on that primary premise, that America would survive only as long as its people live up to their means," Warrior thundered.

"Knowledge of good and evil is the best fruit on the tree of knowledge."

The conservative movement, he declared solemnly, "needs people ready to actualize the entirety of their human potential."

One message that was clear was a hatred of nuance or ambivalence. To defeat the "pervasive degeneracy, ignorance and destruction of soul" that prevails today, he said, "you must live to judge and be ready to be judged ... extremism in defense of moral behavior is no vice." The saying "there are two sides to every story," he told his audience, "brings your loved ones closer and closer to tyranny and outright annihilation."

"Mankind survives by our leaders," he concluded. "All leaders are warriors. Mankind survives by its warriors. Our Republic will truly survive by them as well."

The notion of a nation under siege by enemies both within and without was nearly universal at the College Republican convention, and gave vehemence to its nationalism. Beneath the patriotic bombast lay two distinct currents: There was religion, that old Reaganite sense of America as the city on the hill, poised to lead the world from darkness. And there was resentment -- toward the whining of minorities, the carping of lesser countries, the life chances the students say are circumscribed by an economy made stagnant by welfare freeloaders, swarming immigration and affirmative action.

Some attendees were driven by spiritual conviction that seamlessly encompassed faith in two messiahs, Jesus and Bush. For the true believers, Bush is a man of wonder-working powers. Jason Cole, a 22-year-old senior at the University of Iowa, grew enamored of Bush when he heard his earnest, simple talk of God during the 1999 presidential campaign. Cole says he has little interest in working in politics beyond the 2004 election. "I do it," he explained simply, "because I love President Bush."

Hoo boy. It's all there -- the love of war and the war aesthetic; the identification with the charismatic leader, and the identification of that leader with a shared religious and political belief system.

Scary.