Many Americans seem to be in denial that fascism is even possible in America, let alone that we may be moving fast in that direction under the neo/con regime. Here is a warning written by the Vice-President of the United States during WWII, who saw full-blown fascism in all it's ugliness and horror and who had the intellectual honesty to recognize the seeds of this mental and moral sickness even in his own country.


The Danger of American Fascism

Henry A. Wallace, (Vice President of America, 1941-1945)

An article in the New York Times, April 9, 1944.
From Henry A. Wallace, Democracy Reborn (New York, 1944), edited by Russell Lord, p. 259.

On returning from my trip to the West in February, I received a request from The New York Times to write a piece answering the following questions:
What is a fascist?
How many fascists have we?
How dangerous are they?

A fascist is one whose lust for money or power is combined with such an intensity of intolerance toward those of other races, parties, classes, religions, cultures, regions or nations as to make him ruthless in his use of deceit or violence to attain his ends. The supreme god of a fascist, to which his ends are directed, may be money or power; may be a race or a class; may be a military, clique or an economic group; or may be a culture, religion, or a political party.

The perfect type of fascist throughout recent centuries has been the Prussian Junker, who developed such hatred for other races and such allegiance to a military clique as to make him willing at all times to engage in any degree of deceit and violence necessary to place his culture and race astride the world. In every big nation of the world are at least a few people who have the fascist temperament. Every Jew-baiter, every Catholic hater, is a fascist at heart. The hoodlums who have been desecrating churches, cathedrals and synagogues in some of our larger cities are ripe material for fascist leadership.

The obvious types of American fascists are dealt with on the air and in the press. These demagogues and stooges are fronts for others. Dangerous as these people may be, they are not so significant as thousands of other people who have never been mentioned. The really dangerous American fascists are not those who are hooked up directly or indirectly with the Axis. The FBI has its finger on those. The dangerous American fascist is the man who wants to do in the United States in an American way what Hitler did in Germany in a Prussian way. The American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information. With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more power.

If we define an American fascist as one who in case of conflict puts money and power ahead of human beings, then there are undoubtedly several million fascists in the United States. There are probably several hundred thousand if we narrow the definition to include only those who in their search for money and power are ruthless and deceitful. Most American fascists are enthusiastically supporting the war effort. They are doing this even in those cases where they hope to have profitable connections with German chemical firms after the war ends. They are patriotic in time of war because it is to their interest to be so, but in time of peace they follow power and the dollar wherever they may lead.

American fascism will not be really dangerous until there is a purposeful coalition among the cartelists, the deliberate poisoners of public information, and those who stand for the K.K.K. type of demagoguery.

The European brand of fascism will probably present its most serious postwar threat to us via Latin America. The effect of the war has been to raise the cost of living in most Latin American countries much faster than the wages of labor. The fascists in most Latin American countries tell the people that the reason their wages will not buy as much in the way of goods is because of Yankee imperialism. The fascists in Latin America learn to speak and act like natives. Our chemical and other manufacturing concerns are all too often ready to let the Germans have Latin American markets, provided the American companies can work out an arrangement which will enable them to charge high prices to the consumer inside the United States. Following this war, technology will have reached such a point that it will be possible for Germans, using South America as a base, to cause us much more difficulty in World War III than they did in World War II. The military and landowning cliques in many South American countries will find it attractive financially to work with German fascist concerns as well as expedient from the standpoint of temporary power politics.

Fascism is a worldwide disease. Its greatest threat to the United States will come after the war, either via Latin America or within the United States itself.

Still another danger is represented by those who, paying lip service to democracy and the common welfare, in their insatiable greed for money and the power which money gives, do not hesitate surreptitiously to evade the laws designed to safeguard the public from monopolistic extortion. American fascists http://www.tarpley.net/bush2.htm of this stamp were clandestinely aligned with their German counterparts before the war, and are even now preparing to resume where they left off, after "the present unpleasantness" ceases:

The symptoms of fascist thinking are colored by environment and adapted to immediate circumstances. But always and everywhere they can be identified by their appeal to prejudice and by the desire to play upon the fears and vanities of different groups in order to gain power. It is no coincidence that the growth of modern tyrants has in every case been heralded by the growth of prejudice. It may be shocking to some people in this country to realize that, without meaning to do so, they hold views in common with Hitler when they preach discrimination against other religious, racial or economic groups. Likewise, many people whose patriotism is their proudest boast play Hitler's game by retailing distrust of our Allies and by giving currency to snide suspicions without foundation in fact.

The American fascists are most easily recognized by their deliberate perversion of truth and fact. Their newspapers and propaganda carefully cultivate every fissure of disunity, every crack in the common front against fascism. They use every opportunity to impugn democracy. They use isolationism as a slogan to conceal their own selfish imperialism. They cultivate hate and distrust of both Britain and Russia. They claim to be super-patriots, but they would destroy every liberty guaranteed by the Constitution. They demand free enterprise, but are the spokesmen for monopoly and vested interest. Their final objective toward which all their deceit is directed is to capture political power so that, using the power of the state and the power of the market simultaneously, they may keep the common man in eternal subjection.

Several leaders of industry in this country who have gained a new vision of the meaning of opportunity through co-operation with government have warned the public openly that there are some selfish groups in industry who are willing to jeopardize the structure of American liberty to gain some temporary advantage. We all know the part that the cartels played in bringing Hitler to power, and the rule the giant German trusts have played in Nazi conquests. Monopolists who fear competition and who distrust democracy because it stands for equal opportunity would like to secure their position against small and energetic enterprise. In an effort to eliminate the possibility of any rival growing up, some monopolists would sacrifice democracy itself.

It has been claimed at times that our modern age of technology facilitates dictatorship. What we must understand is that the industries, processes, and inventions created by modern science can be used either to subjugate or liberate. The choice is up to us. The myth of fascist efficiency has deluded many people. It was Mussolini's vaunted claim that he "made the trains run on time." In the end, however, he brought to the Italian people impoverishment and defeat. It was Hitler's claim that he eliminated all unemployment in Germany. Neither is there unemployment in a prison camp.

Democracy to crush fascism internally must demonstrate its capacity to "make the trains run on time." It must develop the ability to keep people fully employed and at the same time balance the budget. It must put human beings first and dollars second. It must appeal to reason and decency and not to violence and deceit. We must not tolerate oppressive government or industrial oligarchy in the form of monopolies and cartels. As long as scientific research and inventive ingenuity outran our ability to devise social mechanisms to raise the living standards of the people, we may expect the liberal potential of the United States to increase. If this liberal potential is properly channeled, we may expect the area of freedom of the United States to increase. The problem is to spend up our rate of social invention in the service of the welfare of all the people.

The worldwide, agelong struggle between fascism and democracy will not stop when the fighting ends in Germany and Japan. Democracy can win the peace only if it does two things:
Speeds up the rate of political and economic inventions so that both production and, especially, distribution can match in their power and practical effect on the daily life of the common man the immense and growing volume of scientific research, mechanical invention and management technique.
Vivifies with the greatest intensity the spiritual processes which are both the foundation and the very essence of democracy.

The moral and spiritual aspects of both personal and international relationships have a practical bearing which so-called practical men deny. This dullness of vision regarding the importance of the general welfare to the individual is the measure of the failure of our schools and churches to teach the spiritual significance of genuine democracy. Until democracy in effective enthusiastic action fills the vacuum created by the power of modern inventions, we may expect the fascists to increase in power after the war both in the United States and in the world.

Fascism in the postwar inevitably will push steadily for Anglo-Saxon imperialism and eventually for war with Russia. Already American fascists are talking and writing about this conflict and using it as an excuse for their internal hatreds and intolerances toward certain races, creeds and classes.

It should also be evident that exhibitions of the native brand of fascism are not confined to any single section, class or religion. Happily, it can be said that as yet fascism has not captured a predominant place in the outlook of any American section, class or religion. It may be encountered in Wall Street, Main Street or Tobacco Road. Some even suspect that they can detect incipient traces of it along the Potomac. It is an infectious disease, and we must all be on our guard against intolerance, bigotry and the pretension of invidious distinction. But if we put our trust in the common sense of common men and "with malice toward none and charity for all" go forward on the great adventure of making political, economic and social democracy a practical reality, we shall not fail.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.)

When unbridled capitalism of the sort we have in the US becomes the government, as it has here, it behaves very much like cancer in a human body. When it is cultural, we call it fascism. Like cancer, fascism subverts the normal governing functions of the body (society or state) and then the cancerous cells proliferate and consume all available resources at the expense of the healthy tissue surrounding them, thereby killing the normal cells. When it has done so much damage to its immediate host tissue as to make staying home unsustainable, it seeks new markets overseas...it metasticizes. Often into South and Central America, Africa, and Asia. Europe seems to have innoculated itself after its bout(s) with the disease, but Britain shows us that it is really only in remission there. Fascism is a disease. A terminal disease. To embrace it is to embrace a culture of death.

That's a great analogy Gadzooks...

VERY well said, Gadzooks!

That's why I oppose the space program. Until we get that cancer under control, I don't want to see it to spread into space.

We need to be a viable, healthy, sustainable culture before we spread into the cosmos.

Like climate change, CAN WE DO ANYTHING ABOUT IT? Here WE are trying, but I often feel like a scream in the wilderness. I have become so cynical, which is SAYING SOMETHING for an old cat who has always been somewhat of a cynic. I feel sad...like I have been sad a long long time, and will BE sad for a long long time. Weary.

It is always the darkest before the dawn.

This is one of my favorite quotes when I'm down on the world.

"When I despair, I remember that all through history, the way of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time they can seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall... Think of it... always."
-- Mahatma Gandhi

True enough and a great quote.
But what we don't know about the darkness,
will it last a month, a year, or a decade?

I personally think that 25 years of darkness is enough... Bill Clinton notwithstanding.

The Corporatists think that they're consolidating power. That's when they'll make their biggest mistakes. It's already begun.

We are living in interesting times.

No more E-Voting... Paper Ballots. (how's that for a non sequitur?)

So, would you say Bush Jr was the keystone that will let the corporate structure fail?
Is there a keystone that will or is causing a cascade of blunders? Or is it, will it be an accumulated effect? Straw that broke the camels back?

With Jorgito Arbusto it's become blatantly obvious that the US "system" is One Corporate Party with a "Democratic" and "Republican" wing. I can't tell you how disgusted I am with CAFTA. The Boys at the DLC should be exiled... I suggest a Ted Nugent Rocking Hunter's Getaway. The DLC deserves that nightmare.

Watch car ads... How much Zero% financing can the system tolerate? That's a big clue. The house of cards is in trouble.



I think that it'll be a combination of the above and occur in waves.

We need some tipping points. You can't fool all of the people all of the time. Eventually it comes time to pay the piper. (shit... am I mixing metaphors?)

Gotta peel away the veneer so that everyone can see the rotted substrate. We can't rely on shoving putty in there any longer. It's time for a rebuild.

This is kinda fun....




A complete rebuild? Would you keep the main frame? (the constitution)
Or do you think the disease is so endemic as to require a completely new structure?

The first option, (i think) could be attained, if things got so bad.
analogy. many of us only go to the dentist when the pain in our mouth is worse than the imagined pain we'll receive in the chair!

The second option, (i think) would require an outright up front civil revolution.
I don't think any rational American could justify that.

Oh stop...

You never realized that reality shows could be fun?

Sadly that's where we're at with the American electorate... If it's not in the media, they don't believe it.

Who Wants To Be A Millionaire... Proof That The Meritocracy Works.

Survivor... Proof That Social Darwinism Works.

Fear Factor... Proof That Your Dull Predictable Existence Is Comfortable and Safe.

Fox News... Proof That What You Don't Know Won't Hurt You. Unless of course it's non-Whites in keffiyehs... They're hiding under your shrubbery. Be very scared!

I'm sure that everyone else here is smart enough to see where the propaganda hides. It's not all in your face. It can be pretty subtle. We need a nation of visionaries who are also cynics at the same time.



Keep the Constitution. It's Legally Sound.

First Big Makeover? Get rid of Corporation Personhood.

Followed Quickly by... Abolishing Electronic Paperless Audit Trail Voting.

Proportional Representation Might Work... Although I'll admit, Ignorant Religious Nuts scare the shit out of me. We do have a very vocal radical minority. Proportional Representation can work if you have an educated electorate.

Educate, educate, educate.... There should be special attention paid to media critique. Give the media back to the people. Break up the Corporate Media Monolith.

Make the Aristocracy Work for Us, tax them. FDR had the right idea. Make them pay for the mess they fostered. They made this mess, let them pay to clean it up. It's only fair.

Send Grover Norquist and the rest of his Free Lunch for Capitalists Crowd to the Moon. I hear there's plenty of sand there to pound. They need to be useful. Grover, pound fucking sand.



We need to weed out the crooks. We missed our chance with Nixon and got stuck with his fucking underlings fucking the country over for revenge, fun, profit and political gain. Read our lips... NO MORE PRESIDENTIAL PARDONS.



I'll buy it. That's a pretty good analogy. The big question here will be: will the citizens, heretofore known erroneously by the Corporatist Weasels running OUR GOVERNMENT as consumers, get up off their couches long enough to realize that they have no choice? Either you go to the dentist and do the work boys and girls or you run the risk of an annoying tooth ache turning into oral CANCER!



The funny thing is that Jefferson did see that we might come to a point such as we have. He knew that another revolution could be an option. It keeps the government honest. Sadly the Corporate Bastards feel that they've mollified the people to the point of not understanding what's happening. Hey... What's on the tube Honey...? Bring me a brewsky.

I went to a talk a while back about the Downing Street Memo. The woman who gave the talk spends a lot of time in England and is very current on world affairs. When the floor was opened for questions, I pointed out that our Congress is ineffective and asked if Parliament was likely to be more effective.

The answer I got surprised me. I was reminded that unlike our Congress, Parliament can summon the Prime Minister at any time, and the Prime Minister is required to answer their questions there and then. But the speaker went on to explain that many countries have rejected our system of goverment in favor of a parliamentarian system precisely because it was less likely to lead to a fascist dictatorship.

I think the tipping point will be an economic crash. People have a tendency to wake up when they find themselves in desperate circumstances. What we have to do at that point is not accept any band-aids for our cancer, but insist on a cure. That doesn't necessarily entail major surgery and chemo. In our case a natural cure would be more appropriate. A change in diet--no more oil and a switch to renewable energy sources. A crash will cut out the gluttony all by itself, so with reduced usage, sustainable energy sources would be sufficient. A change of regime--no more corporate interference with or participation in government. A healthy purge to rid our body politic of pollutants--impeachments at every level of government from top to bottom for bad behavior wherever people are found to have favored corporations over people.

The Constitution can stay, but only if the preamble is made enforceable. The intent of the Constitution is clearly stated in the preamble, and any government action which does not "form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, and promote the general welfare" is clearly unConstitutional and should be liable to penalties. All oaths of office must also be enforceable and subject to penalties for violation including, but not limited to, mandatory removal from office and loss of the right to hold any future office. Our government must be one of "we the people" and it must return to being our government, not the corporations'. Any right that we grant to corporations must be accompanied by enforceable responsibilities, and all corporations must be rechartered on a probationary basis. They are not people, they are contracts, and we must make those contracts legal. If we give them the right to operate and they give us nothing in return, or constitute a fiscal burden to us, the contract is not legal and must be revoked.

We need to abolish the electoral college and have direct elections for president. We need publicly-funded elections and honest, open election systems. We need instant run-off voting and proportional representation. A party that gets 5% of the votes, gets 5% of the seats. We need redistricting based on income, not on geography. We need real checks and balances. The Supreme Court has to be elected, not appointed, and it must be prevented from making decisions that neither follow nor set precedent--such a decision is bad behavior and grounds for impeachment. The executive branch must be accountable to the legislative branch.

We need to permit our representatives to represent us. Currently, if a representative has the proper security clearances and is on the appropriate committees to oversee intelligence operations, and they learn that an intelligence agency is doing something unConstitutional that is bad for the country, they are not permitted to even tell their colleagues what they've learned, no less inform their constituents. So how can they represent us?

There's a lot more, but we all know what has to be done. It's a shame that it will take an economic catastrophe before we have the opportunity to make necessary changes, but when (there is no if here, just when) that opportunity comes, we have to take advantage of it the same way Bushco took advantage of 9/11--the only difference being that we won't cause the crash, or even be responsible for letting it happen, as Bushco is bringing it on themselves and us against our will. But we must anticipate it and take advantage of it, as it will be our only chance to make real and lasting changes.

Well said folkie.

You'd better be careful though; you mentioned Welfare. The Cheap Labor Conservative Corporatists will get you for that.

You BOTH seem to be playing the same song using the same instrument.
And I agree completely!


The "Great Depression" being the last and only other real example of changes brought about by economic collapse. So much of what we take for granted today came about directly because of that "rebuild." I find it hugely ironic that so much that is being attacked today, are depression era reforms! The robber barons never left, they just went dormant and waited for their grandchildren to install personhood, which seems to work more effectively than 18th and 19th century feudalism.

I fear the economic house of cards is about to crash big time! GW has tweeked the system so badly it cannot support it's self. It's only the Voodoo (economics) that keep it up today. But when the magic of the voodoo is no longer believe to be real, down it will come. And this time compared to the "great depression", well, it's fucking scary! Mr. Gates clearly has much more to lose than I do. And he will! But HE most likely won't starve to death! Me and my child don't have that guarantee!

If the American economy fails, in a way that is absolutely possible and feared, (Wolfawitz as world bank chairman????) then I say it's very possible that the USA we know today might not survive! And the constitution? Well, hopefully it'll still be used by someone calling them selves the United States of America, what ever that is.

apocalypse?
I'm sorry to say pResident Bushco has made the idea possible enough to consider.
With Jerry Falwell on the TV saying a prayer as the handbasket goes to hell.

Their greed may be their undoing. As Middle and Lower Class America is crushed under the burden of high energy prices, greedy creditors who never met a junk fee they did not like (not to mention usurious interest rates), health care costs spiraling out of sight (without a commensurate increase in quality), and an economy that fails in general to make tangible stuff stateside. This economy has devolved into a melange of speculative enterprises and reselling goods made in cheap labor countries such as China, and outsourcing technical knowhow to India (they are even outsourcing R&D overseas).

The end result of this banana-republic like maldistribution of wealth and increasing misery and uncertainty for the bottom 80-90 percent of Americans will likely be depression followed by a correction or revolution. Domestic bloodshed may occur, as it has in previous progressive struggles like the turn of the century unionization drives and in the 1930s.

I cannot see any other result based on current trends. Unless we can install some truly reformist progressive government before we fall off the cliff, this greed will undo the current system, and the center will not hold.

When we cannot pay for their cheap imported goods, the gas for the automobiles and planes, the inflated energy and health care costs, the economy will implode. Most of the plutocrats are too greedy to realize that we cannot eat war, or overpriced energy, or healthcare, or survive long with an economy that has forgotten how to make things.

It doesnt matter much if there is a GW Bush or some other corporate enabler at the head of government holding the reigns. It is the corporations and the super wealthy that are actually holding the reigns of power, and when the balance is upset as it is now, and they continue failing to think beyond the short term bottom line, the shortsightedness will be their downfall. Even Henry Ford realized you had to pay a living wage in order for working class people to afford your products.

I don't have the big picture, just little pieces of it.

Business likes stability. China has a growing middle class and we have a shrinking middle class. So the reason big money is treating us like a banana republic, looting the treasury and preparing to flee, is probably that we've been written off.

Today's fascists aren't less enlightened than Henry Ford was. They've already passed peak oil, peak timber, and peak everything else in the U.S., and they're creating markets elsewhere.

Sometimes I think we may never get another chance.

I think nukes were a species-wide suicide bomb.

Meitner and Einstein, the two people most responsible for the development of nukes, were both persecuted by the Nazis, were both anti-fascist, and yet they gave their discovery to this country, stating openly at the time that they were aware that this was also a fascist country. I don't claim anything near their genius, but I can't think of any other reason anti-fascists would give a weapon to fascists, other than it being a booby-trap. And Bush sure looks like a booby to me.