Timely repost: Thom Hartmann on American Fascism

[Nothing Without Hope]

It has been a bit over six months since this article was published, ordinarily not such a very long time, but the world has become so much scarier since then. Given the insane excesses of the B* admin, most recently the explosive Seymour Hersch story on the secret Iran targetting missions and the ongoing process to hollow out the CIA to remove all oversight of Bush's plans (http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x2962328), I thought that it would be good to repost Thom Hartmann's article:
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Published on Monday, July 19, 2004 by CommonDreams.org
Original posted at http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0719-15.htm

The Ghost of Vice President Wallace Warns: "It Can Happen Here"
by Thom Hartmann

(snip)

Although most Americans remember that Harry Truman was Franklin D. Roosevelt's Vice President when Roosevelt died in 1945 (making Truman President), Roosevelt had two previous Vice Presidents - John N. Garner (1933-1941) and Henry A. Wallace (1941-1945). 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.

"The really dangerous American fascists," Wallace wrote, "are not those who are hooked up directly or indirectly with the Axis. The FBI has its finger on those. The dangerous American fascist 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 this, Wallace was using the classic definition of the word "fascist" - the definition Mussolini had in mind when he claimed to have invented the word. (It was actually Italian philosopher Giovanni Gentile who wrote the entry in the Encyclopedia Italiana that said: "Fascism should more appropriately be called corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power." Mussolini, however, affixed his name to the entry, and claimed credit for it.)

(snip)

Vice President Wallace bluntly laid out in his 1944 Times article his concern about the same happening here in America: " If we define an American fascist as one who in case of conflict puts money and power ahead of human beings, then there are undoubtedly several million fascists in the United States. There are probably several hundred thousand if we narrow the definition to include only those who in their search for money and power are ruthless and deceitful. ... They are patriotic in time of war because it is to their interest to be so, but in time of peace they follow power and the dollar wherever they may lead."

(snip)
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Sound familiar? I also recommend a recently posted analysis in a thread comment here on the DU board:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=2959236&mesg_id=2960414&page=
The poster gives twelve warning signs of fascism and an explanation of each one. Very scary.

[UL_Approved]

1. Good find

This is exactly what is needed to pursue Bush in all his misguided glory. Every time we call him a Fascist, we compare him to Mussolini. But this leaves out the American brand of this foolishness. Perhaps the term is Subversionist, or Revisionist. In any case, the ideology of this is a social disease, and it will prove fatal without some form of cure.

[Nothing Without Hope]

2. Re the "social disease" aspect - here's a must-read

This 11 page insightful psycho-social analysis by Paul Levy looks at the madness in a comprehensive way that makes sense to me. I think his ideas have been making the rounds, since I have seen his coined term "malignant egophrenia" several times recently.

http://baltimorechronicle.com/011305PaulLevy.html

ANALYSIS:
The Madness of George W. Bush: A Reflection of Our Collective Psychosis
Bush’s sickness is our own.
by Paul Levy

George W. Bush is ill. He has a psycho-spiritual disease of the soul, a sickness that is endemic to our culture and symptomatic of the times we live in. It’s an illness that has been with us since time immemorial. Because it’s an illness that's in the soul of all of humanity, it pervades the field and is in all of us in potential at any moment, which makes it especially hard to diagnose.

Bush's malady is quite different from schizophrenia, for example, in which all the different parts of the personality are fragmented and not connected to each other, resulting in a state of internal chaos. As compared to the disorder of the schizophrenic, Bush can sound quite coherent and can appear like such a "regular," normal guy, which makes the syndrome he is suffering from very hard to recognize. This is because the healthy parts of his personality have been co-opted by the pathological aspect, which drafts them into its service. Because of the way the personality self-organizes an outer display of coherence around a pathogenic core, I would like to name Bush's illness ‘malignant egophrenic (as compared to schizophrenic) disease,’ or ‘ME disorder,’ for short. If ME disorder goes unrecognized and is not contained, it can be very destructive, particularly if the person is in a position of power.

(snip)
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The article goes on to continue his analysis, including points such as the parallels with Hitler's Germany. As I said, I consider this a must-read for anyone trying to comprehend the motivations behind this administration and its willfully blind supporters.

[Nothing Without Hope]

3. .

[Nothing Without Hope]

4. One last kick n/t