In modern times in the U.S.A. the Republican Party is little more than
an ongoing revolt against the United States itself. This
"revolution" could not continue without the billions of dollars pumped
into the party by the Koch brothers and other GOP donor-class oppressors
and exploiters of the American people. The Republican Party could easily go the way of
the Federalists, the
Know-nothings, and the Whigs. Sure, it
has something of a mass base even today in the evangelical churches of
the South and rural America, and in the country clubs. It has some
Washington think tanks and lots of gerrymandered bogus powers. But the contradictions between the Republican
warmongers, holy rollers, bigots, and legions of the greed worshipers, could easily be used to
tear this party to pieces. And good riddance! The current presidential field has revealed the maleficent pernicious nature of the elemental intrinsic character of what this political party has become. While the fascist rhetoric of Trump and Cruz could not be more obvious, the history of union busting, oligarchy, and austerity is common cause to most all modern republican candidates.
The Democratic Party could have, and chose not to really take the Koch party down simply by denouncing their policies and candidates for what they actually are instead of pretending they and their policies were actually some sort of reasonable discourse in polite debate... which is absolute rubbish. This may be a moot point, because right now we seeing the GOP destroyed from the inside.
Donald Trump, who has been compared by conventional republican power brokers both to a
wrecking ball, and to Samson bringing down the temple of the
Philistines on the heads of the tenants has made it all too apparent what the Republican base is all about in reality. Out and out Fascism.
By rights, the GOP ought to be a regional party in the
deep South, rural America, and the sparsely populated intermountain
West. They must never, ever, be allowed to elect another
president again. As such an election would certainly lead to a packed Supreme Court, the busting all remaining unions, impose suicidal
budget cuts, and set up a permanent austerity dictatorship in which the
right to vote of any possible opponent constituencies would be severely
limited.
This is the golden ticket promised by Trump’s outrageous demagogy. The Republican Party today
stands as a roadblock on every avenue of American national progress. The
very existence of this party is frankly intolerable, and a threat to everyone’s
lives, and those of their children and grandchildren.
Frankly, if the Republican
Party could undergo even a partial collapse, the political climate of
the United States would revert to a more normal ideological pattern.
If the Republican Party were to dwindle into a gaggle
of regional racists and bigots, the Wall Street faction of the
Democratic Party would soon find itself in increasing conflict with the
residual but still quite present New Deal or pro-labor Democrats. If the two
factions which are latent but observable inside the Democratic Party
today were to break apart, this would be the easiest and most elegant
way to get the United States back on track to having a functional economy and a just social-political structure.
Most any observer can see that Trump's atrocious characterizations of Mexicans, saying that he wants to shut
down mosques and other Muslim religious centers, that he would
create a registry of all Muslims in the United States and would ban all Muslims from entry to the country can be easily compared
to
Hitler’s Krystalnacht of 1938 and the Nuremberg racist laws. (Regarding Trump’s absurd demand to bar entry to all Muslims. How could this ever
be enforced? By a new Spanish Inquisition? Trump's program could only be
enforced by a suffocating fascist police state that would oppress all Americans.)
The understanding that most Americans have of Hitler and Nazism tends
to be rather reductionist, in the sense that it focuses almost exclusively on
Hitler’s genocidal policies against Jews. However there is no shortage of other victims (Russian prisoners of war, communists and
social democrats, intellectuals, teachers, trade unionists, Gypsies, homosexuals, and all political opponents in
general). In reality, Fascism and Nazism represent a total world
outlook, with atrocious implications for virtually every sphere of human
activity. In any case, shortly after the middle
of November, many Americans were beginning to understand that Trump
actually was at least a fascist, and most probably a Nazi. It is important to stress that the American people, despite their
many flaws, have one of the best anti-fascist records in the world.
During the 1930s, most countries in Europe, from Portugal to Romania,
fell under fascist governments. Historically it's a good record. Even the Russians, who did the lions share of fighting the Nazis, as well as England & France had appeasement policies regarding Hitler at first. Though our record of fighting fascism is a good one, I question if we can discern fascism when it's rhetoric & symbols are adapted to appeal to American sensibilities. Which is why I feel compelled to write this. I'd like to think most of us do recognize fascism when we see it. Yet hope as Mr. Trump has said is for losers...he may be right in a sense on that count. Hope, in itself is a fine thing but it may not be enough in itself to accomplish anything...it takes some sort of action as well.
Other aspects of Fascism and Nazism that many people are not aware of include a terrorist dictatorship of banking concerns and financiers. In a representative democracy where there is a Congress or
Parliament, the question of fascism has arisen when the demands
by the bankers for genocidal austerity against working people have
become unbearable and intolerable, leading to forms of political
resistance like mass strikes. In Italy, the financiers of the
bourgeoisie, were terrified that the Italian Army had gone on strike and
refused to fight at Caporetto in 1917, and became even more frightened
when Italian workers occupied most of the industrial factories in the
country in 1920, leading to a two-year working-class upsurge. So in 1919,
the bankers and factory owners recruited desperate and demoralized war
veterans (the squadristi) to work as scabs and strikebreakers, and also
to attack the party offices and the publications of political rivals. In
Germany the Nazis recruited similar goons, calling them the
brownshirts, storm troopers, or Sturmabteilungen. We needn't stretch our facilities very hard to see similarities in the Trump
campaign, with many documented instances of protesters at
his rallies getting beaten up by Trump’s fanatical backers. It is undeniable that Trump explicitly endorsed the violence
from his bombastic podium. In the case of Ted Cruz, we have a candidate
who eagerly accepts endorsements and support from anti-abortion groups
with track records of violence and even murder against physicians
working at women’s health clinics, in particular Planned Parenthood. The summer of 2016 is shaping up to become an
unprecedented festival of political violence in the U.S.
Nazis, and fascists are also aware of the advantages of pretending to act within the confines of laws.
Mussolini became Prime Minister with a March on Rome in October 1922,
which had undeniable terrorist potential. It took the Duce several years
to consolidate his dictatorship, a time punctuated by numerous
political murders like that of Giacomo Matteotti who openly spoke in the Italian Parliament alleging the Fascists committed fraud in the recently held elections, and denounced the violence they used to gain votes. It is
often said that Hitler became Chancellor and was given dictatorial
power by legal means. This is not accurate, since the vote on setting up
a dictatorship had been preceded by the expulsion of the communist
(KPD) members of the parliament. In France, the fascist Marshal Petain
was elected dictator and the French Republic abolished by the vote of a
few hundred senators and deputies in a theater in the resort town of
Vichy in the summer of 1941, but there was never the necessary quorum.
Mainly, Petain could lean on the German Army which had conquered France
in six weeks. The appearance of legitimacy...to a degree.
Fascist Economics- Mussolini and Hitler both did everything possible to drive down the
real wages of workers and of the middle class. This
corresponds to a policy of primitive accumulation among the wealthiest and extreme austerity
which loots and asset strips living standards and the real economy in
order to generate monetary profits to prop up masses of insolvent debt. (Not unlike the toxic derivatives and junk bonds of modern Wall Street Investment Banks). For more information about Fascist economics, read about Hitler's economic adviser;
Hjalmar Schacht. Along with the reduction in real wages, fascism attempts to destroy labor unions, trade unions, craft unions, industrial unions, and any other organization attempting to protect working people.
The early Italian fascists sought to wipe out every existing
organization, including sports clubs, book clubs, ladies’ sewing
circles, and all others, forcing their members into a gigantic fascist
corporation. (Corporation in this sense does not mean the modern
American concept of a joint stock company, but rather a medieval guild
with master, journeyman, and apprentices all locked together in organic
unity, denying any underlying class tensions.) We can say that just
about all the Republican candidates are fascists in terms of their
intention of driving down real wages and destroying the labor movement.
The most aggressive in this regard are the fanatics of the Libertarian
Austrian school.
Fascism promotes xenophobia, the hatred of foreigners, and
real or imagined territorial claims against other countries. When Fascist promises of economic success don't pan out, they generate enthusiasm through war hysteria. In today’s world, fascism
anywhere risks becoming a path to a 3rd World War.
Irrationality and the rejection of reason is another tell tale trait of fascism. Hitler relied on the myth that the Germans were a race of supermen and needed to exterminate competing races of
subhuman individuals bent on the destruction of the superior species.
Hitler told Germans to turn away from reason and think with their blood.
Demagogy and hysteria based on these themes are found everywhere in
fascism. Closely related to this, is the scapegoating ethnic groups in the wake of national disasters.
Hitler’s original agitation at the beginning of his political career
was focused on the myth of "the stab in the back", which was a claim that the
German army had never been militarily defeated on the field of battle,
but rather only betrayed by cliques of liberals, communists, Jews,
socialists, and defeatists in Berlin. This was called the Dolchstoßlegende, and it was the
staple Nazi argument of the 1920s. Of course the German army had indeed been
defeated in the field, specifically by the American Expeditionary Force
in the battles of St. Mihiel and the Meuse-Argonne. Trump’s stab in
the back story is based on his invented account of Muslims in Jersey
City cheering when the twin towers came down. This pseudo-incident allows Trump to argue that Muslims have received
American hospitality and responded with treachery. This thought process is
identical to that of Hitler.
Fascists tend to be superstitious and invoke mythological ideas, ghosts, and spirits, they are inclined towards mysticism.
(These aspects of fascist irrationality unfortunately find receptive ears among many Americans who are fooled by waving flags and the mention of popular deities.) Fascism overall has an anti-intellectual tendency.
Mussolini once told a journalist that he held educational programs in
contempt, and did not want to have one, since the only guarantee of
effective government was the power and determination of the individuals
involved. Hitler made sure that the Nazi party program remained a
neglected relic, and always tried to prevent it from being updated. For
the Nazis, there was no difference between propaganda and university
teaching.
You can see modern versions of this when Texas removes Thomas Jefferson from it's history text books, demands for creation myths to be taught in the science classroom are made, or the Koch brothers are allowed to choose political science professors at Florida Universities in return for making donations.
Misogyny – fascists of all kinds hate and fear
women. Psychologists can spend entire careers on Fascist Dictators and their innumerable "issues". Trump may be the obvious misogynist, with unfiltered insults flowing daily about females in all walks of life, but most all republican rhetors promote the same inequality, maybe not quite as blatantly.
Fascism also appears as the negation of parliaments and legislative processes.
Mussolini called the Italian Parliament a
cattle pen and pigsty. This is once again like Hitler, who never
accepted the Constitution of the Weimar Republic, and got himself
appointed dictator as soon as he seized power in January 1933. The way the US legislators have ignored the presidential authority of Barack Obama, pretending it is somehow illegitimate (despite being elected twice by significant margins in uncontested elections...I mean it's not like he lost the popular vote and was appointed by the Supreme Court! :P ) smacks of fascism. Many of the promises of Trump and other Republican presidential candidates are outside constitutional authority. They either are willing to spit on the constitution...or at least the parts they don't like, or have no knowledge of it.
Libertarians-Fascists? A Strange Alliance.
First off we have to understand that Libertarianism was invented by the decadent Viennese Frederich von Hayek and
von Mises in the service of greedy landlords and other bloodsucking
exploiters.
(
Neither of them ever seem to have held a single academic appointment that didn't involve a corporate sponsor). .Libertarianism was further developed at the London School of
Economics by Sir Lionel Robinson. This toxic doctrine was
brought to the United States under the auspices of David Rockefeller,
who was so stupid that he needed to hire Von Hayek to pass at the London School of Economics. Von Mises
was brought over later.
The peculiarity of libertarianism is that, while it is formally
distinct from fascism and Nazism, libertarianism, practiced on a
sufficient scale eventually destroys a society to such a point that
the door opens wide for Fascism and Nazism...they become much easier to impose. The classic example is
the German Chancellor Heinrich Bruening, whose austerity policies
destroyed the German economic and political system between 1930 and
1932, leaving the country just a few months away from Hitler’s seizure
of power when Bruening left office. There is unquestionably an affinity
between fascism and libertarianism as seen in this example. Libertarians create the vacuum that sucks in fascism. We are seeing an appalling capitulation to
Trump by leading members of the so-called libertarian movement. Republican operatives like Matt Drudge and Roger Stone are evidently
attempting to incorporate large parts of the libertarian/conspiracy/fear
porn/paranoia alternative media community into a kind of a cheering
section for the fascist Trump. But many of that audience have been duped
a number of times already, and might now decide to assert a different
perspective. Let's hope so.
Is Trump a statesman? Is he the George Washington of our time?
Certainly not. Is Ronald Reagan our greatest president? In no way. One
would have thought that a libertarian might have come up with something a little more believable than "the Gipper" to usher in Trickle Down & Free Market Trojan Horses, but alas people fell for it . The political landscape is now filled with
libertarian orphans who don’t want to go down with Rand Paul, and who
may be eyeing the fascism of demagogue Trump.
After all this negativity about Trump, I must confess that I don't think he is any more dangerous than a Ted Cruz. Maybe less. However he is more obvious. He makes no effort to disguise it.
Sources-
The Nazi Hydra in America ... political science text by Glen Yeadon
how-the-money-power-created-libertarianism-and-austrian-economics/
The Rise Of Fascism And Nazism
-
http://www.academia.edu/11022950/The_Rise_of_Fascism_and_Nazism
- Venice’s War Against Western Civilization
- Appeared in Fidelio, Summer 1995
