[Politics]

America the Fascist

Lewis Lapham happened across an old article by Umberto Eco recently, and it sent him on his most recent tirade, available in the October issue. (I use tirade--instead of, say, jeremiad--advisedly. Lapham, reliably more outraged than any writer in America, does not muse--he rages. One wonders, though, why the regime of George Bush produces only one really mad writer--in the MSM, anyway.) In the article, published in 1995, Eco discusses the qualities of fascism that describe the political movement, as opposed to the metaphor for evil "fascism" has become. Lapham distills Eco's key elements like this (sorry, no link):

• The truth is revealed once and only once.
• Parliamentary democracy is by definition rotten because it doesn't represent the voice of the people, which is that of the sublime leader.
  
• Doctrine outpoints reason, and science is always suspect.
• Critical thought is the province of degenerate intellectuals, who betray the culture and subvert traditional values.
• The national identity is provided by the nation's enemies.
• Argument is tantamount to treason.
• Perpetually at war, the state must govern with the instruments of fear.
• Citizens do not act; they play the supporting role of "the people" in the grand opera of the state.

Striking, isn't it? But aside from the cynical pleasure we derive from giving this label to the GOP's current brand of politics, there's an important point to be made here. The Republican Party is no longer just misguided. The problems presented by their corrupt arrogance aren't merely ones of ideology or policy--they are a threat to our constitutional democracy.

In the first half of the century, liberals made a similar miscalculation when they praised and courted Stalin, Mao, and Castro. Had leaders begun to consolidate power in the federal government--using it to seize private property and crush dissent--they would have threatened democracy the way the GOP now does. Fortunately, Democratic leaders didn't follow the Maoist wing of the base.

But the GOP has begun to follow the fascist wing of its base--has, in fact, pretty much ceded decision-making to that wing. The founding fathers wisely put a number of barriers in place to prevent an easy power grab, but one sees in the actions and intentions of the GOP the same elements Eco identified ten years ago. That they haven't succeeded in seizing more power is no evidence that they aren't trying. The danger of the GOP is not just the usual threat one party poses to another: the current leadership actually threatens the bedrock law that define our delicate democracy.