The Road to Fascism

Last week’s blog post by Sara Robinson (by way of Common Dreams) got me to thinking and reading about the possibility of a successful fascist movement in the US. It referenced a scholarly history article by Robert O. Paxton, which was very enlightening. So what do they say? Could it happen here in America?

Success [of a fascist movement] depends on certain relatively precise conditions: the weakness of a liberal state, whose inadequacies seem to condemn the nation to disorder, decline, or humiliation; and political deadlock because the Right, the heir to power but unable to continue to wield it alone, refuses to accept a growing Left as a legitimate governing partner (p.13).

That sounds awfully familiar after only seven months of Obama’s Presidency. “Weakness of a liberal state” refers to a weakness of political will (e.g., to crack down on illegal immigration) or a paralysis because of political gridlock. Republicans have become “the party of No,” obstructing when they don’t have power.

The relationship between the well-heeled politicians of the Right and the less educated, less affluent part of their base has been changing. The old Southern Strategy appealed to racial bigotry and fear, but its effects took place in the privacy of the voting booth. Wink, wink, nudge, nudge, vote for us, then go back to watching the monster trucks. In the age of Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck, however, the right-wing masses are permanently stirred up, angry, ready to fight. At its heart, fascism isn’t about ideas; it’s about emotions (anger and fear) and violent action. The emotion part has been obvious for a while. The mobilization for violent action, taking it to the street, is what seems new to me.

According to Paxton, fascism as a full-fledged political force began in the 20th Century. However, the protofascist roots began in the US, in the form the Ku Klux Klan:

Just after the Civil War, some former Confederate officers, fearing the vote given to African Americans by the Radical Reconstructionists in 1867, set up a militia to restore an overturned social order. The Klan constituted an alternate civic authority, parallel to the legal state, which, in its founders’ eyes, no longer defended their community’s legitimate interests. In its adoption of a uniform (white robe and hood), as well as its techniques of intimidation and its conviction that violence was justified in the cause of the group’s destiny, the first version of the Klan in the defeated American South was a remarkable preview of the way fascist movements were to function in interwar Europe (p. 12).

We don’t see anything yet to match the Klan in its heyday. Survivalists, militias, White Power groups, and the like are at the margins. However, if we do see a resurgence of protofascist violence, “conservative” talk radio, Fox News, and the right-wing blogosphere will be the movement’s nervous system. The ultimate irony is whipping up what might become fascism by calling Obama the new Hitler.

Sotomayor v. White Supremacists

The nomination of Sonia Sotomayor, on its own, doesn’t excite the progressive in me. The Supreme Court hasn’t been an agent of social progress in decades, and in most situations, it probably shouldn’t be. Sotomayor is competent and mainstream.

What gets me riled up is the tactics of the regressive Right. Reasonable people can have good-faith disagreements on issues such as affirmative action. However, painting Sotomayor as some Latina supremacist is absurd. Much has been made of the “wise Latina” comment. I’ve read the transcript of the whole speech, and it’s the opposite of racist. More importantly, Tom Goldstein of SCOTUSblog has reviewed her cases related to race:

Of the 96 cases, Judge Sotomayor and the panel rejected the claim of discrimination roughly 78 times and agreed with the claim of discrimination 10 times; the remaining 8 involved other kinds of claims or dispositions. Of the 10 cases favoring claims of discrimination, 9 were unanimous. (Many, by the way, were procedural victories rather than judgments that discrimination had occurred.) Of those 9, in 7, the unanimous panel included at least one Republican-appointed judge.

All evidence points to a sober and conscientious application of the law, not an agenda to advance Latinas at any cost.

Some of Sotomayor’s critics, on the other hand, have a history of cheering and justifying White supremacy. Senator Jeff Sessions of the Judiciary Committee was himself rejected by it for a seat on the U.S. District Court in Alabama because of racist remarks. He said that he liked the KKK until he found out that some of them smoked pot. Pat Buchanan made an appearance on The Rachel Maddow Show and unabashedly claimed that White men deserved to dominate U.S. politics because of their achievements. No one should be surprised, given Pat’s role as an architect of the “Southern strategy” and his other disgusting comments on race. And then we have the wit and wisdom of Rush Limbaugh, the de facto leader of the Republican Party. Have they no shame?