Reverend Land frets about Christian Fascism

[T]he point I am making is that Mr. Bush is a sincere front man for an emerging fascism. His religious rhetoric is an authentic merging of Holiness Christianity with Imperial Americanism. The emphasis on security, law and order is necessary to maintain the "high calling" of the American people. The policies of fascism, in other words, are consistent with religious holiness and holy war narratives. And fascism, woven underneath Christian Holiness/Holy War traditions, is a powerful symbolic narrative that speaks to the American people as evidenced by Mr. Bush's 58% approval rating.

Obviously, this was written some time ago, as El Presidente' hasn't seen 58% in a while, but it was brought to mind last night as I was watching "Back to School" with one of my sons. In the movie, Robert Downey Junior plays a comical commie sidekickwho shares inspirational gems as, "violent ground-aquisition games such as football are a crypto-fascist metaphor for nuclear war." There's that word again, "fascist." I ran across a variation this morning in the Dallas Star-Telegram, "islamofascist." Neal Boorts uses the latter moniker as well.

These fascists must be everywhere; and they are, but not in the way Reverend Land expects. To Reverend Land, fascism seems to be the rhetorical equal of an emphasis on law and order combined with a national purpose. And that is a part of fascism, yet it is a very small part. Boortz is even less correct: radical Islamism has nothing to do with fascism. But both of them illustrate how politics, from both sides of the political aisle, has simply devolved into name-calling. And the worst part is not that people call names (Jesus called the Pharisees a "generation of vipers," after all) but that when they do so unthinkingly, the very words they misuse lose their meaning. And when words have no meaning, there's nothing to talk with or about.

Fascism is a perfect example. What is it? "Well, it's wacko Christians who want to tell people what to do." No, it's not. "Well, it's towel-headed A-rabs who want to blow up children." No, it's not. Let's look at what Fascism entails, from "The Authoritative Dictatorial Page" (which features Mussolini's "Manifesto of the Fascist Struggle" translated by Vox Day).

Mussolini's Fascists defined themselves in 1919, and if you read through the manifesto, you'll find a whole lot of very familiar planks:

Suffrage for Women (Part Ia)
Voting age set at 18 (Part Ib)
An 8-hour work day (Part IIa)
Deference to labor unions (Part IIc-d)
A Minimum Wage (Part IIb)
A national transportation policy (Part IIe)
A national retirement age (Part IIf)
A national militia (Part IIIa)
Exportation of culture (Part IIIc)
Progressive taxation (Part IVa)
Seizure of church property (Part IVb)
Seizure of excess profits (Part IVc)

Now, I've skipped a few, and you're free to look them up at the link above, but I ask you, is there anything on this list that America has not implemented or an American political party has not tried to implement since 1919?

If we take a hard look at what fascism claimed for itself to be, what it ran on, what it implemented, it becomes obvious that not only do those who apply the "fascist" moniker to others not know what it means, they are usually 80+% fascist themselves.

As Vox himself said:

In 1925, Mussolini encapsulated the heart of fascist philosophy in a memorable phrase:

Tutto nello Stato, niente al di fuori dello Stato, nulla contro lo Stato. This means "Everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State." Now, I ask you, in the Year of Our Lord 2004, does that sound more like a Libertarian, a Republican or a Democrat?

Yes, there are fascists everywhere, and the one thing they have in common is the desire to use the government to control labor and capital, to make sure everyone votes, and to eliminate or subsume any organization (e.g. the church) that gets in the way of government power. They are not some fringe element, but the very "mainstream' of modern American government and ideology. If we wonder why we can't get the government to do something about all these fascists in our midst, it's only because we fail to realize that "getting the government to do something for us" is the very heart and soul of fascism.

Copyright 2005 El Borak, inc. Makers of Chapeau le Pew brand skunkskin caps. Available in black and white or white and black.