"Living Under Fascism," by Davidson Loehr

Davidson Loehr delivered the following sermon at the First Universalist-Unitarian Church of Austin on November 7, 2oo4.  It's reproduced here in full, unabridged and not divided up into separate pages, because I consider it of such great importance.  For more information, see the First UU Church of Austin website.

LIVING UNDER FASCISM

You may wonder why anyone would try to use the word "fascism" in a  serious discussion of where America is today.  It sounds like cheap  name-calling, or melodramatic allusion to a slew of old war movies.   But I am serious.  I don't mean it as name-calling at all.  I mean  to persuade you that the style of governing into which America has  slid is most accurately described as fascism, and that the necessary  implications of this fact are rightly regarded as terrifying.   That's what I am about here.  And even if I don't persuade you, I  hope to raise the level of your thinking about who and where we are  now, to add some nuance and perhaps some useful insights.

The word comes from the Latin word "Fasces," denoting a bundle of  sticks tied together.  The individual sticks represented citizens,  and the bundle represented the state.  The message of this metaphor  was that it was the bundle that was significant, not the individual  sticks.  If it sounds un-American, it's worth knowing that the Roman  Fasces appear on the wall behind the Speaker's podium in the chamber  of the US House of Representatives.  Still, it's an unlikely word.   When most people hear the word "fascism" they may think of the  racism and anti-Semitism of Mussolini and Hitler.  It is true that  the use of force and the scapegoating of fringe groups are part of  every fascism.  But there was also an economic dimension of fascism,  known in Europe during the 1920s and '30s as "corporatism," which  was an essential ingredient of Mussolini's and Hitler's tyrannies.   So-called corporatism was adopted in Italy and Germany during the  1930s and was held up as a model by quite a few intellectuals and  policy makers in the United States and Europe.  As I mentioned a   few weeks ago (in "The Corporation Will Eat Your Soul"), Fortune  magazine ran a  cover story on Mussolini in 1934, praising his  fascism for its ability to break worker unions, disempower workers  and transfer huge sums of money to those who  controlled the money  rather than those who earned it. 

Few Americans are aware of or can recall how so many Americans and  Europeans viewed economic fascism as the wave of the future during  the 1930s.  Yet reviewing our past may help shed light on our  present, and point the way to a better future.  So I want to begin  by looking back to the last time fascism posed a serious threat to  America. 

In Sinclair Lewis's 1935 novel "It Can't Happen Here," a  conservative southern politician is helped to the presidency by a  nationally syndicated radio talk show host.  The politician - Buzz  Windrip - runs his campaign on family values, the flag, and  patriotism.  Windrip and the talk show host portray advocates of  traditional American democracy ˜ those concerned with individual  rights and freedoms ˜ as anti-American.  That was 69 years ago.  One  of the most outspoken American fascists from the 1930s was economist  Lawrence Dennis.  In his 1936 book, The Coming American Fascism ˜ a  coming which he anticipated and cheered ˜ Dennis declared that  defenders of "18th-century Americanism" were sure to become "the  laughing stock of their own countrymen."  The big stumbling block to  the development of economic fascism, Dennis bemoaned, was "liberal  norms of law or constitutional guarantees of private rights."

So it is important for us to recognize that, as an economic system,  fascism was widely accepted in the 1920s and '30s, and nearly  worshiped by some powerful American industrialists.  And fascism has  always, and explicitly, been opposed to liberalism of all kinds.   Mussolini, who helped create modern fascism, viewed liberal ideas as  the enemy.  "The Fascist conception of life," he wrote, "stresses  the importance of the State and accepts the individual only in so  far as his interests coincide with the State.  It is opposed to  classical liberalism [which] denied the State in the name of the  individual; Fascism reasserts the rights of the State as expressing  the real essence of the individual."  (In 1932 Mussolini wrote, with  the help of Giovanni Gentile, an entry for the Italian Encyclopedia  on the definition of fascism.  You can read the whole entry here.)  Mussolini thought it was unnatural for a government to protect  individual rights: The essence of fascism, he believed, is that  government should be the master, not the servant, of the people. 

Still, fascism is a word that is completely foreign to most of us.   We need to know what it is, and how we can know it when we see it.   In an essay coyly titled "Fascism Anyone?," Dr. Lawrence Britt, a  political scientist, identifies social and political agendas common  to fascist regimes.  His comparisons of  Hitler, Mussolini, Franco,  Suharto, and Pinochet yielded this list of 14  "identifying  characteristics of fascism."  (The following article is from Free   Inquiry magazine, Volume 23, Number 2.  Read it at  http://www.secularhumanism.org/library/fi/britt_23_2.htm ) See  how  familiar they sound. 

1.    Powerful and Continuing Nationalism Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottos,  slogans,  symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia.  Flags are seen  everywhere, as are flag  symbols on clothing and in public displays.

2.    Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights  Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in  fascist regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in  certain cases because  of "need."  The people tend to look the other  way or even approve of torture,  summary executions, assassinations,  long incarcerations of prisoners, etc.

3.    Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the  need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial, ethnic  or religious  minorities; liberals; communists; socialists,  terrorists, etc. 

4.    Supremacy of the Military Even when there are widespread domestic problems, the military is  given a disproportionate amount of government funding, and the  domestic agenda is neglected.  Soldiers and military service are  glamorized.

5.    Rampant Sexism The governments of fascist nations tend to be almost exclusively  male-dominated.  Under fascist regimes, traditional gender roles are  made more  rigid.  Opposition to abortion is high, as is homophobia  and anti-gay legislation and national policy.

6.    Controlled Mass Media Sometimes the media are directly controlled by the government, but  in other cases, the media are indirectly controlled by government  regulation, or sympathetic media spokespeople and executives.   Censorship, especially in war  time, is very common.

7.    Obsession with National Security Fear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the  masses.

8.    Religion and Government are Intertwined Governments in fascist nations tend to use the most common religion  in the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion.  Religious  rhetoric and terminology is common from government leaders, even  when the major tenets of the religion are diametrically opposed to  the government's policies or actions.

9.    Corporate Power is Protected The industrial and business aristocracies of a fascist nation often  are the ones who put the government leaders into power, creating a  mutually  beneficial business/government relationship and power  elite. 

10.    Labor Power is Suppressed Because the organizing power of labor is the only real threat to a  fascist government, labor unions are either eliminated entirely, or  are severely suppressed. 

11.    Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts Fascist nations tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to  higher education, and academia.  It is not uncommon for professors  and other academics to be censored or even arrested.  Free  expression in the arts is openly attacked, and governments often  refuse to fund the arts.

12.    Obsession with Crime and Punishment Under fascist regimes, the police are given almost limitless power  to enforce laws.  The people are often willing to overlook police  abuses and even forego civil liberties in the name of patriotism.   There is often a national police force with virtually unlimited  power in fascist nations

13.    Rampant Cronyism and Corruption Fascist regimes almost always are governed by groups of friends and  associates who appoint each other to government positions and use  governmental  power and authority to protect their friends from  accountability.  It is not uncommon in fascist regimes for national  resources and even treasures to be appropriated or even outright  stolen by government leaders. 

14.    Fraudulent Elections Sometimes elections in fascist nations are a complete sham.  Other  times elections are manipulated by smear campaigns against or even  assassination of opposition candidates, use of legislation to  control voting numbers or  political district boundaries, and  manipulation of the media.  Fascist  nations also typically use  their judiciaries to manipulate or control elections.

This list will be  familiar to students of political science.  But  it should be familiar to  students of religion as well, for much of  it mirrors the social and political  agenda of religious  fundamentalisms worldwide.  It is both accurate and  helpful for us  to understand fundamentalism as religious fascism, and fascism as   political fundamentalism.  They both come from very primitive  parts of us  that have always been the default setting of our  species: amity toward our  in-group, enmity toward out-groups,  hierarchical deference to alpha male  figures, a powerful  identification with our territory, and so forth.  It is that brutal  default setting that all civilizations have tried to raise us  above,  but it is always a fragile thing, civilization, and has to  be achieved over and  over and over again. 

But, again, this  is not America's first encounter with fascism.  In  early 1944,  the New York Times asked Vice President Henry Wallace  to, as Wallace noted,  "write a piece answering the following  questions: What is a fascist?  How many  fascists have we?  How  dangerous are they?"  Vice President  Wallace's answer to those  questions was published in The New York Times on April  9, 1944, at  the height of the war against the Axis powers of Germany and   Japan.  See how much you think his statements apply to our society  today. 

"The really  dangerous American fascist," Wallace wrote, " 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." 

In his strongest indictment of the tide of fascism he saw rising in  America, Wallace added, "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."  By these standards, a few of today's weapons for   keeping the common people in eternal subjection include  NAFTA, the World Trade  Organization, union-busting, cutting worker  benefits while increasing CEO pay, elimination of worker benefits,  security and pensions, rapacious credit card interest, and  outsourcing of jobs ˜  not to mention the largest prison system in   the world.

The Perfect Storm Our current  descent into fascism came about through a kind  of "Perfect Storm, " a confluence of three unrelated but mutually  supportive schools of thought. 

1.    The first  stream of thought was the imperialistic dream of  the Project for the New  American Century.  I don't believe anyone  can understand the past four years  without reading the Project for  the New American Century, published in September  2000 and authored  by many who have been prominent players in the Bush   administrations, including Cheney, Rumsfleid, Wolfowitz, Richard  Perle and Donald Kagan to name only a few.  This report saw the fall  of Communism as a call for America to become the military rulers of  the world, to establish a new  worldwide empire.  They spelled out  the military enhancements we would need,  then noted, sadly, that  these wonderful plans would take a long time, unless there could be  a catastrophic and catalyzing event like a new Pearl Harbor that   would let the leaders turn America into a military and militarist  country.  There was no clear interest in religion in this report,  and no  clear concern with local economic policies.

2.    A second  powerful stream must be credited to Pat Robertson  and his Christian  Reconstructionists, or Dominionists.  Long  dismissed by most of us as a screwball, the Dominionist style of  Christianity which he has been preaching since the early 1980s is  now the most powerful religious voice in the Bush administration.   Katherine Yurica,  who transcribed over 1300 pages of interviews  from Pat Robertson's "700 Club"  shows in the 1980s, has shown how  Robertson and his chosen guests consistently,  openly and  passionately argued that America must become a theocracy under the   control of Christian Dominionists.  Robertson is on record saying  democracy is a terrible form of government unless it is run by his  kind of  Christians.  He also rails constantly against taxing the  rich, against  public education, social programs and welfare ˜ and  prefers Deuteronomy 28 over  the teachings of Jesus.  He is clear  that women must remain homebound as obedient servants of men, and  that abortions, like homosexuals, should not be allowed.  Robertson  has also been clear that other kinds of Christians, including  Episcopalians and Presbyterians, are enemies of Christ.  (The Yurica  Report.  Search under this name, or for "Despoiling America" by   Katherine Yurica on the internet.)

3.    The third  major component of this Perfect Storm has been  the desire of very wealthy  Americans and corporate CEOs for a  plutocracy that will favor profits by the very rich and  disempowerment of the vast majority of American workers, the   destruction of workers' unions, and the alliance of government to  help achieve  these greedy goals.  It is a condition some have  called socialism for the rich, capitalism for the poor, and which  others recognize as a reincarnation of  Social Darwinism.  This  strain of thought has been present throughout American history.   Seventy years ago, they tried to finance a military coup to replace  Franklin Delano Roosevelt and establish General Smedley Butler as a   fascist dictator in 1934.  Fortunately, the picked a general who  really  was a patriot; he refused, reported the scheme, and spoke  and wrote about  it.  As Canadian law professor Joel Bakan wrote in  the book and movie "The Corporation," they have now achieved their  coup without firing a shot.  Our plutocrats  have had no particular  interest in religion.  Their global interests are  with an  imperialist empire, and their domestic goals are in undoing all the  New  Deal reforms of Franklin Delano Roosevelt that enabled the rise  of America's  middle class after WWII. 

Another ill wind  in this Perfect Storm is more important than its  crudity might suggest: it was  President Clinton's sleazy sex with a  young but eager intern in the White  House.  This incident, and  Clinton's equally sleazy lying about it, focused  the certainties of  conservatives on the fact that "liberals" had neither moral  compass  nor moral concern, and therefore represented a dangerous threat to  the  moral fiber of America.  While the effects of this may be hard  to quantify,  I think they were profound. 

These "storm"  components have no necessary connection, and come  from different groups of thinkers, many of whom wouldn't even like  one another.  But together, they  form a nearly complete web of  command and control, which has finally gained  control of America  and, they hope, of the world.

What's coming When all fascisms exhibit the same social and political agendas (the 14 points listed by Britt),  then it is not hard to predict where a  new fascist uprising will lead.  And  it is not hard.  The actions  of fascists and the social and political  effects of fascism and  fundamentalism are clear and sobering.  Here is some  of what's  coming, what will be happening in our country in the next few   years: 

  The theft of all social security funds, to be transferred to  those who control money, and the increasing destitution of all those  dependent on social security and social welfare programs. 

  Rising numbers of uninsured people in this country that already  has the highest percentage of citizens without health insurance in  the developed world. 

  Increased loss of funding for public education combined with  increased support for vouchers, urging Americans to entrust their  children's education  to Christian schools.

  More restrictions on civil liberties as America is turned into  the police state necessary for fascism to work 

  Withdrawal of virtually all funding for National Public Radio and  the Public Broadcasting System.  At their best, these media  sometimes encourage critical questioning, so they are correctly seen  as enemies of the  state's official stories. 

  The reinstatement of a draft, from which the children of  privileged parents will again be mostly exempt, leaving our poorest  children to fight and die in wars of imperialism and greed that  could never benefit them anyway.  (That was my one-sentence  Veterans' Day sermon for this year.) 

  More imperialistic invasions: of Iran and others, and the  construction of  a huge permanent embassy in Iraq. 

  More restrictions on speech, under the flag of national  security. 

  Control of the internet to remove or cripple it as an instrument  of free  communication that is exempt from government control.  This  will be presented as a necessary anti-terrorist measure.   

  Efforts to remove the tax-exempt status of churches like this  one, and to characterize them as anti-American. 

  Tighter control of the editorial bias of almost all media, and   demonization of the few media they are unable to control ˆ the New  York Times, for instance. 

  Continued outsourcing of jobs, including more white-collar jobs,  to produce greater profits for those who control the money and  direct the society, while simultaneously reducing America's workers  to a more desperate  and powerless status. 

  Moves in the banking industry to make it impossible for an  increasing number of Americans to own their homes.  As they did in  the 1930s, those  who control the money know that it is to their  advantage and profit to keep others renting rather than owning. 

  Criminalization of those who protest, as un-American, with  arrests, detentions and harassment increasing.  We already have a  higher percentage of our citizens in prison than any other country  in the world.  That  percentage will increase. 

  In the near future, it will be illegal or at least dangerous to  say the things I have said here this morning.  In the fascist story,  these things are un-American.  In the real history of a democratic  America, they were  seen as profoundly patriotic, as the kind of  critical questions that kept the American spirit alive ˜ the kind of  questions, incidentally, that our media  were supposed to be  pressing.

Can these schemes  work?  I don't think so.  I think they are  murderous, rapacious, and insane.  But I don't know.  Maybe they  can.  Similar schemes have  worked in countries like Chile, where a  democracy in which over 90% voted has  been reduced to one in which  only about 20% vote because they say, as Americans are learning to  say, that it no longer matters who you vote for. 

Hope In the meantime, is there any hope, or do we just band together like  lemmings and dive off a cliff?  Yes, there is always hope, though at  times it is more hidden, as it is now.

As some critics  are now saying, and as I have been preaching and  writing for almost twenty years, America's liberals need to grow  beyond political liberalism, with its often self-absorbed focus on  individual rights to the exclusion of individual responsibilities to  the larger society.  Liberals will have to construct a more complete  vision with moral and religious grounding.  That does not mean  confessional Christianity.  It means the legitimate heir to  Christianity.  Such a legitimate heir need not be a religion, though  it must have clear moral power, and be able to attract the minds and  hearts of a voting majority of Americans. 

And the new  liberal vision must be larger than that of the  conservative religious vision that will be appointing judges,  writing laws and bending the cultural norms toward hatred and  exclusion for the foreseeable future.  The conservatives deserve a  lot of admiration.  They have spent the last thirty years studying   American politics, forming their vision and learning how to gain  control in the  political system.  And it worked; they have won.   Even if liberals can develop a bigger vision, they still have all  that time-consuming work to do.  It won't be fast.  It isn't even  clear that liberals will be willing to do it; they may instead  prefer to go down with the ship they're used to.  One man who has   been tireless in his investigations and critiques of America's slide  into fascism is Michael C. Ruppert, whose postings usually read as  though he is wound way too tight.  But he offers four pieces of  advice about what we can do  now, and they seem reality-based enough  to pass on to you.  This is America;  they're all about money:

    First, he says you should get out of debt.   

    Second is to spend your money and time on things that give  you energy and provide you with useful information.   

    Third is to stop spending a penny with major banks, news  media and corporations that feed you lies and leave you angry and  exhausted.

    And fourth is to learn how money works and use it like a  (political) weapon ˜ as he predicts the rest of the world will be  doing against us  (see From The Wilderness).

That's advice written this week.  Another bit of advice comes from  sixty years ago, from Roosevelt's Vice President, Henry Wallace.   Wallace said, " Democracy, to crush fascism internally,  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." 

Still another way  to understand fascism is as a kind of  colonization.  A simple definition of  "colonization" is that it  takes people's stories away, and assigns them supportive roles in  stories that empower others at their expense.  When you are taxed to  support a government that uses you as a means to serve the ends of   others, you are ˜ ironically ˜ in a state of taxation without   representation.  That's where this country started, and it's where  we are now. 

I don't know the next step.  I'm not a political activist; I'm only  a preacher.  But  whatever you do, whatever we do, I hope that we  can remember some very basic  things that I think of as eternally  true.  One is that the vast majority of  people are good decent  people who mean and do as well as they know how.  Very few people  are evil, though some are.  But we all live in families where some  of our blood relatives support things we hate.  I believe they mean  well, and the way to rebuild broken bridges is through greater   understanding, compassion, and a reality-based story that is more  inclusive and empowering for the vast majority of us. 

Those who want to live in a reality-based story rather than as serfs  in an ideology designed to  transfer power, possibility and hope to  a small ruling elite have much long and hard work to do,  individually and collectively.  It will not be either easy  or  quick.  But we will do  it.  We will go forward in hope and in  courage.  Let us seek that better path, and find the courage to take  it ˜ step, by step, by step.