, regimenting all industry, commerce, etc., and emphasizing an aggressive nationalism and often racism.
This of course is the traditional meaning of fascism as racism does not play a key role in American fascism. Moreover, the dictator is not a single person but a group of elite or ruling class despots all working together for their own interests. For a thorough definition please visit the Wikipedia definition for fascism.
The primary element of any fascist state is collectivism. It places a higher value on the concerns of the group over the rights of the individual. Thus the needs or even life of any single human being or all people of any smaller group can be sacrificed for the greater good. However, this term is really just a misnomer because it is almost solely applied by those who drive public policy to serve their own hidden illicit agendas.
Thus American fascism is rooted in the trading of other people’s wealth and liberty by those in power in exchange for personal gain and it is done without the consent or knowledge of those being compromised. A paraphrase from the Gettysburg Address nicely packages democracy (and freedom) – a government by the people for the people. With traditional fascism we have a government by the people for the government. With contemporary American fascism government becomes a conduit for a third party – a government by the people for the government for the corporation.
Congressman Ron Paul (R-Tx) describes American fascism as soft fascism. This is also known as corporatism. This means fascism is a spectrum with the most extreme form being that of Benito Mussolini’s Italy, Hitler’s Germany, or Stalin’s Soviet Union.
To prove that the United States reflects many traits of traditional fascism this article will reveal how all people are manipulated with questionable principles to support public policies that are harmful to society; demonstrate how our elected leaders are eroding our civil rights; disclose how the government is managed by an elite class of despots through corporatism, other private interests such as labor unions, and because of foreign interests such as the Israel lobby (AIPAC) and European banks; and advance why democracy is very limited to anemic representation in Washington and other levels of government.
Others have taken a point by point approach and these also inspired my analysis. These are very good for a quick overview but they do not examine how the collective mind of the public is systematically shaped to support public policies that lean toward fascism.
- Dr. Lawrence Britt’s Fourteen Defining Characteristics Of Fascism.
- Naomi Wolf’s Fascist America, in 10 easy steps.
- Laura Dawn Lewis What is Fascism (The 7 Conditions that Foster and Fuel Fascism).
It is dire to correct this before it becomes too deep otherwise just like Third Reich Germany, there is a possibility of history repeating itself and we may have reached a point of no return. I sincerely hope my analysis will motivate readers to take effective action whatever form that may take.
The following embedded video is of the whole interview of Ron Paul on NBC’s Meet The Press with Tim Russert. Before moving on it is important to note that most republics (states) now exhibit a sort of states-level soft fascism through labor unions who represent government workers.