Fascism

Fascism is any system of government where the people have what they consider a mainstream state-of-the-art government compatible with their culture – and then make one additional modification. They install a leader who gives them such hope and unity that they entrust him to make occasional exceptions to the law for important and pragmatic reasons.

Fascist regimes can vary widely because the whims of the leader tend to result in a changing and somewhat incoherent mishmash of rules – like a new parent with a 2 year old. Also, fascism can develop in diverse cultures with unique problems. Another difference in fascist regimes is that early stage fascism, where the leader has made only a few popular exceptions to the law, looks significantly different than late stage fascism, where the leader’s will has entirely supplanted the law.

Although fascist regimes have several common characteristics, the only principle common to all fascist regimes is unity, everything else can vary depending on the will of the leader, which is a triumph of pragmatism over principles.

Some characteristics of each fascist regime are more common than others. For example, the probable path to fascism is likely to begin when the people feel convinced that they are all in agreement on the direction their government should take, and when they also feel that they are currently faced with an overwhelming crisis for which their system of government lacks the authority or the will to manage effectively.

Several side effects of fascism are probable.

For the good of everyone, the leader must have the power necessary to fix any problem as well as the power to unite everyone. Therefore, any threat to the leader’s will is thus a threat to the people themselves. Therefore, any form of repression is reluctantly accepted as justified.

Fascism tries to respect state-of-the-art government such as the right to private property, private business, and self defense, but these increasingly become illusions because all wealth and all activity by any individual or any organization becomes increasingly regulated and controlled for the good of everyone as the leader sees new ways to optimize the use of money and labor and to eliminate opposition.

The obsession of the people with unity tends to result in peer pressure to conform and thus anyone who engages in political dissent will be bullied. As the fascist regime matures, such bullying is likely to become extreme.

Faith in the government and especially in the leader increasingly becomes cult-like as competing sources of faith, hope , and unity, such as religion, are supplanted by government. This reminds me of the Cult of the Left in the America.

Fascism tries to respect the rule of law and due process, but the rule of law and due process increasingly become illusions as the law increasingly gives way to the will of the leader. However, the will of the leader might increasingly be interpreted as the law, and the leader tends to overturn existing law only for very important and pragmatic reasons, which thus maintains the illusion of the rule of law when in fact it is the opposite of the rule of law.

Although the leader seeks to unite the people, inevitably the leader is not up to his superhuman task and will begin to scapegoat one individual or group and then another. Whereas, the right scapegoats external threats, and the left scapegoats its own people, fascism is less principled and may scapegoat either.

American Fascism

America’s move towards fascism has been slow because the genius of the Constitution has maintained a division of power that is still understood to this day. Unfortunately, the courts no longer seem to understand the Bill of Rights and the limits on the powers of government. The courts now let government do pretty much whatever its wants to solve problems and unite the people. It is thus almost as if America has a fascist dictator who is the entire US government.

America has been slowly moving towards fascism starting with Lincoln’s great leap forward. Historians give Lincoln a free pass to this day – ostensibly because several years into Lincoln’s war to end secession, one of his many whims for which he had no authority, was to free the slaves. Of course, it would be very easy for us to accurately observe that Lincoln was basically a fascist dictator and yet still give Lincoln the credit he deserves for finally deciding to free the slaves and for then deciding near the end of his life that blacks just might deserve equality as well as freedom.

Several other President’s, such as FDR, have also facilitated significant leaps towards fascism.

Many people today think Bush was the most fascist president, but if Bush were a significantly fascist leader then he would lack respect for the little guy and the rule of law, he would champion many new regulations, he would have an activist agenda, he would have a fanatical core following, he would have high overall popularity among the people and the media, and he would have weak opposition. Now I am no Bush fan, but Bush was not afraid to let the people keep and bear arms. Rather than championing new regulations, he championed deregulation. He championed foreign pro-democracy dissidents far more than other US presidents. He had no fanatical core following (at least not fanatical about him), and he had ferocious opposition. He certainly didn’t have the popularity to do anything too extreme. If 9/11 had not happened, he would have done very little as President. Therefore, we cannot accurately describe Bush as a fascist leader any more so than the average politician – most of whom are somewhat fascist.

Now consider that Obama does want to disarm the little guy, that he does champion many new regulations, that he has an extremely activist agenda, that he has a fanatical core following, that he does not believe in the Constitution, and that he has unprecedented popularity among the people and the media.

It is possible as of this writing that Barack Obama will become the first true fascist leader in America. An Obama regime looks like it would differ from most historical forms in that it would be internationalist fascism rather than nationalist fascism. Also, Obama is a leftist, but he is not a very principled or consistent leftist. It would be more accurate to say that he is a fascist with a leftist bent.

Of course, Obama’s job approval rating among likely voters is 56% and falling, and is actually lower than at this same point in Bush’s first term. In fact, Clinton’s approval rating never fell below 60% for a single day during his second administration. Therefore, the fascist ambitions of the Obama administration seem unlikely to be realized anytime soon.

Obama would need the economic crisis to be even worse, or he would need some kind of other crisis to complete the leap to fascism under a single leader. This reminds me that his chief of staff, Rohm Emmanuel, said on Nov. 17^th, “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste”.

On the other hand, we are so close to complete fascism now that 8 years of gradual movement in that direction may be sufficient to set the stage for a final crisis that would give Obama a third term, which would never end. I have already foreseen this possibility when I wrote Obama’s Third Inaugural Address several weeks ago.

Fascism in Their Own Words

Fascism was summarized by Mario Palmieri in “The Philosophy of Fascism”, 1936:

“Economic initiative cannot be left to the arbitrary decisions of private individual interest. Open competition, if not wisely directed and restricted, actually destroys wealth instead of creating it. … The proper function of the State in the Fascist system is that of supervising, regulating, and arbitrating the relationships of capital and labor, employers and employees, individuals and associations, private interests and national interests … More important than the production of wealth is its right distribution. Distribution which must benefit in the best possible way all the classes of the nation, hence, the nation itself. Private wealth belongs not only to the individual, but, in a symbolic sense, to the State as well.”

I used to think that regulation was the new form of socialism, but then I read this quote, and now I see that the Democrats are not really socialists – but are fascists. Then again, Nazi is short for National Socialists. Perhaps the Nazi’s saw fascism as a new kind of socialism. Therefore, we could accurately refer to many Democratic leaders as socialists or as fascists.

It seems that Republicans are actually a little less fascist than Democrats, but moving towards fascism more slowly than the Democrats is certainly no reason to vote for Republicans.

Of course, there are no Nazis among Democratic or Republican leaders.

Let’s not confuse fascism with Nazism. Nazism added democide (a government killing its own citizens) to fascism. The reasons include the usual need for fascism to find scapegoats, but also, any minority is at risk appearing to the majority as disloyal and thus a threat to the fascist goal of unity. For example, the Nazis were afraid that the Jews saw themselves as Jews first and Germans second, but of course, as a libertarian I would say that even if the Jews did think of themselves as Jews first and Germans second – so what?

It may sound like fascism is thus the form of government most likely to lead to democide, but consider that communist governments have killed far more of their own people than fascist governments.

The Empire Strikes Back

No doubt Obama's fanatical core following would like to smear Leeroy F. Dermit if they discover The Promise of Reality, and as everyone should know by now, Obama has requested that his supporters forward the email addresses and web sites of his opponents to flag@whitehouse.gov so that the government can ... enlighten them.

So ... on August 9, 2009, I felt it was my civic duty to report my own little web site, which gets about five visitors a day and has never been mentioned by any newspaper or website. I sent the following message to the new Whitehouse snitch address:

I think you may agree that, in the long run, the greatest danger to Mr. Obama's goals to transform America could be the words and the ideas originating from the author of the web site www.LeeroyFDermit.com.

Apparently the Whitehouse agreed! Just four days later, my site was one of a handful targeted by the New York Times!

The NYT article was entitled Godwin’s Law Comes to the Town Halls, and it attempts to prove that millions of Americans are making unsubstantiated associations between Obama (or Democrats) and Nazi’s or Hitler, that they are motivated by racism, and that racism is also the driving force behind the dissenters in the town halls.

As evidence, it cites this dispassionate intellectual article, which primarily defines fascism, and secondarily identifies some fascist tendencies of the Democrats, but it does not compare anyone to Nazi’s or Hitler.

Perhaps the NYT didn’t notice that I wrote this artilce on April 3^rd – four months before the town halls began. The NYT apparently also didn’t notice that there was nothing racist in this article or anywhere else on my site.

Could this attack by the NYT be a coincidence? Could the NYT really believe that my undiscovered site somehow proves something about the beliefs of millions of Americans who have not yet discovered it?

Are we supposed to believe that the NYT author did a Google search for “Obama fascism OR Nazi”, which returned 10,100,000 web pages, and then after reviewing millions of pages, decided that my site was one of the best examples to prove his main thesis?

Astronomically unlikely. It is more likely we will discover that Obama is actually the Grand Wizard of the KKK.

Or… could it be that the White House used the NYT in what it thought was a smart move against a dissenter? Did the most powerful government in the world, use the most powerful newspaper in the world, to attack the least powerful blogger in the world?

Yeah. That’s not fascism.

Feel the power of the Dark Side.