Never mind that the steps laid out by Mr. Goldberg are those, as history has shown us, used by fascist leaders of any stripe. Never mind that the term "liberal fascism" is an oxymoron. Allow me to direct you to the following article by Naomi Wolfe.
<center><a href=http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/apr/24/usa.comment>Fascist America, in 10 easy steps</a></center>
In it she also points out the steps Bush has take towards a fascist government.
Also, for your edification:
<blockquote>Main Entry:<b>1lib·er·al </b>
Pronunciation: \ˈli-b(ə-)rəl\
Function: adjective
Etymology: Middle English, from Anglo-French, from Latin liberalis suitable for a freeman, generous, from liber free; perhaps akin to Old English lēodan to grow, Greek eleutheros free
Date: 14th century
<b>1 a</b>: of, relating to, or based on the liberal arts <liberal education> barchaic : of or befitting a man of free birth <b>2 a</b>: marked by generosity : openhanded <a liberal giver> b: given or provided in a generous and openhanded way
Main Entry: <b>fas·cism</b>
Pronunciation:\ˈfa-ˌshi-zəm also ˈfa-ˌsi-\
Function: noun
Etymology: Italian fascismo, from fascio bundle, fasces, group, from Latin fascis bundle & fasces fasces
Date: 1921
<b>1</b> often capitalized : a political philosophy, movement, or regime (as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition <b>2:</b> a tendency toward or actual exercise of strong autocratic or dictatorial control <early instances of army fascism and brutality — J. W. Aldridge</blockquote>
Try here, more links than we have time for:
http://www.classicalvalues.com/archives/2007/08/post_419.html
August 24, 2007
The fascists are still coming!
But this time, they're libertarians in deadly sneakers!
I had a pretty good education (at least I like to think I had), and in addition to that, I've read a lot of books about history, including many about the Third Reich. I've studied the origins and rise of both Hitler and Mussolini, and I've read about innumerable fascist and quasi-fascist regimes. The usual stuff like Franco in Spain, Salazar in Portugal, Stroessner in Paraguay, Peron in Argentina (although he was a left/right hybrid), along with some convincing analyses that modern China is actually a fascist, not Communist, state.
But it was under "Bush fascism" that I noticed a steady deterioration in my skills. Not only was I not "getting it" (and failing to recognize the fascism before my very eyes), but a lot of people weren't. I don't know whether to blame Bush entirely for this, but it was during the Bush regime that the definition of fascism seemed to change dramatically, and become infinitely more complicated.
I used to think I knew what fascism was, but the longer Bush was in office, the more the word seemed to take on new meanings. It was as if the word "fascism" had developed an elasticized penumbra, and acquired octopus-like tentacles which reached out and engulfed things which in the old days had not been considered fascism, but which now were. Fascist hegemony was being achieved not by goose-stepping soldiers, but by definitional expansionism -- largely accomplished by computer keyboards.
Quite naively, I resorted to the traditional dictionary definition of fascism:
fascism n. 1. [often cap.] The principles of the Fascisti; also, the movement or government regime embodying those principles.
2. Any program for setting up a centralized autocratic national regime with severely nationalistic policies, exercising regimentation of industry, commerce and finance, rigid censorship, and forcible suppression of opposition.
Webster's New International Dictionary (Second Ed., 1958)
I was soon scolded by the blogosphere's leading proponent of fascist definitional hegemony, who assured me that the definition of fascism was not to be found in any dictionary, but in the writings of Robert Paxton, whose 2005 definition of fascism is considered widely respected:
"A form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.''
Notice that the 2005 definition has shifted from the former focus on a style of government to a focus on the thought processes of the people who want to take it over.
Paxton sees fascism not as a type of government but as a mass psychological phenomenon often involving dissent, anarchy, even revolution -- so long as the emotional factors are present. Paxton cites the Ku Klux Klan as an example, not of a fascist government, but as a backlash against legal government:
It may be that the earliest phenomenon that can be functionally related to fascism is American: the Ku Klux Klan. Just after the Civil War, some former Confederate officers, fearing the vote given to African Americans in 1867 by the Radical Reconstructionists, set up a militia to restore an overturned social order. The Klan constituted an alternate civic authority, parallel to the legal state, which, in the eyes of the Klan's founders, no longer defended their community's legitimate interests.
By adopting a uniform (white robe and hood), as well as by their techiques of intimidation and their conviction that violence was justified in the cause of their group's destiny, the first version of the Klan in the defeated American South was arguably a remarkable preview of the way fascist movements were to function in interwar Europe. It should not be surprising, after all, that the most precocious democracies -- the United States and France -- should have generated precocious backlashes against democracy.
Seen this way, fascism need not prevail, and can exist anywhere. Provided, of course, that there's an "obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy and purity," and the "mass-based party of committed nationalist militants." As I posited in another essay, the Nation of Islam would fit this definition. So would the Ayatollah Khomeini's organization. The former became a bit of a joke, while the latter took over the Iranian government.
But what about Bush fascism? Not so neat and tidy, even with the expanded definition. To be accommodating, the term "pseudo fascism" has been proposed. This includes people like Rush Limbaugh ("transmitters" of "eliminationist rhetoric") but not Ward Churchill or Louis Farrakhan, no matter how much they might resemble the Paxton formulation. ....