Lackey
The Right Wing has disdain for democracy and the Middle Class, Working Poor and the Poor of America and of course the 2nd and 3rd World.
New Right Wing
The New Right Wing Agenda
http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0613-02.htm
"The most important implication of all this is that large segments of the domestic and world population are no longer seen as worth worrying about. On one level, this is just racism and classism. But there's more than that going on. In the past, capitalism was optimistic and assumed that it would keep expanding, which provided the basis for a "corporate liberalism" that saw everyone in the world as a potential consumer and/or laborer - and therefore having some potential worth. But the new reactionaries see the future as much more of a zero-sum game. Partly, this is an expression of their incredible greed and corruption - their incessant efforts to rip off wealth for themselves and their narrow sets of cronies. In any case, the result is that most of Africa, large swaths of Latin America and Asia, and significant parts of the domestic US population have been simply written off -individuals who may arise from the trodden mass are welcome as junior partners, but there is no concern at all for the general well being of these sectors beyond token PR and the limited need to keep local elites from causing too much anti-American trouble on the world stage.
"The amazing thing is that the right wing fundamentalists have been able to seize power and win a large amount of support - or at least acquiescence -- among the US electorate. The people I talk with point to a number of contextual reasons. First, this country lacks any significant institutionalized alternative. The Democratic Party is both complicit and fratricidal. The labor movement is the only really powerful potential organized opposition, but they are ideologically scattered, organizationally weak, and under unremitting attack. In addition, the powerful role of money in shaping our electoral outcomes is another key ingredient in the right wings success, as well as in keeping liberal (much less radical) alternatives from gaining influence in the Democratic Party. The increasing dominance of US media by an incredibly small number of incredibly right wing corporations has a powerful impact. The collapse of the Soviet Union, the lack of any significant "third way," and the resulting feeling that there is "no viable alternative" has been a very important context for the right wings' ability to present themselves as inevitable and unstoppable. Finally, the current climate of insecurity, fear, and even paranoia - which the government and media are successfully doing their utmost to deepen and expand - plays an important role in making it hard for opposition to find political space.
<snip>
"Most important, by wrapping themselves in the mantle of religion, the GOP leadership has made themselves a vehicle for the growing religious fundamentalist upsurge - parts of which can accurately be described as a fascist movement. Having god on your side means you are always right, no matter what other people may think or how events may fall out. You simply never have to say you are sorry, and all your failures are the result of evil forces beyond your control. Being on a Crusade, having an absolutist and deeply ideological sense of mission, also underpins the right wing's willingness to use all the power at their command - legal and extra-legal - to push for a maximal agenda. No matter how thin their electoral margin of victory, once in office, they act without hesitation or compromise. They understand that success creates its own legitimacy and its own tailwind, pulling others along with it.
"The scariest part is that the right wing lunatics feel that they'll get away with it. Who remembers Afghanistan, or the absence of Iraqi's supposed weapons of mass destruction? Who seems to care that our economy is collapsing? In the short term, Bush and company win not because of smarter strategies or brilliant tactics, but because they have access to overwhelming resources and power and they can simply outlast everyone and everything else. In fact, they are so incompetent and so blind to the complexities of the real world that they will make huge mistakes. So it is possible (but not inevitable) that the world situation will spin out of control and the small clique now running the country will have to pass the baton to others in 2004 or 2008. But we should not underestimate their willingness to keep imposing their will through direct (or indirect) force -- the racism, lies, manipulation, and violence used to secure the 2000 election are likely to be repeated or exceeded in coming years.
<more>
I argue for fascism with the term "neo" prefixed to it. Neo: "New and different" -- different than the fascisms that preceded it (in many ways), new in that it represents the agenda of the radical "conservatives" that came to power through the logically twisted and power-serving SCOTUS decision of December 12. I use the term "neo-fascism" because "fascism" resonates with negative emotions already out there (it serves as a meme). I mean to make it stick to the current regime. I understand the risk (the oversimple dismissal because "Bush is no Hitler").
I mean to push buttons. "Neo Liberal Imperialism" just doesn't have quite the same weight, but shout "fascism" at a suburban cocktail party and you will engage debate! (Gotta move that "middle" ya know!)
Here's another good article from the great OnlineJournal.com, available here.
Midnight ride of the rabble
By Thom Hartmann
OnlineJournal.com
To every Middlesex village and farm,
A cry of defiance, and not of fear,
A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door,
And a word that shall echo for evermore!
For, borne on the night-wind of the Past,
Through all our history, to the last,
In the hour of darkness and peril and need,
The people will waken and listen to hear.
-From Paul Revere's Ride by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1863
June 13, 2003-Emerson told us, in his lecture Angloam, that in America "the old contest of feudalism and democracy renews itself here on a new battlefield." Perhaps seeing our day through a crack between the skeins of time and space, Emerson concluded, "It is wonderful, with how much rancor and premeditation at this moment the fight is prepared."
"Feudalism?
"Let's be blunt. The real agenda of the new conservatives is nothing less than the destruction of democracy in the United States of America. And feudalism is one of their weapons.
<snip>
"The government of the United States is us. It was designed to be a government of, by, and for We, the People. It's not an enemy to be destroyed; it's a means by which we administer and preserve the commons that we collectively own.
"Nonetheless, the new conservatives see our democratic government as the enemy. And if they plan to destroy democracy, they must have something in mind to replace it with. ... What conservatives are really arguing for is a return to the three historic forms of tyranny that the Founders and Framers identified, declared war against, and fought and died to keep out of our land. Those tyrants were kings, theocrats, and noble feudal lords.
<snip>
"The great and revolutionary ideal of America is that a government can exist while drawing its authority, power, and ongoing legitimacy from a single source: "The consent of the governed." Conservatives, however, would change all that.
"In their brave new world, corporations are more suited to governance than are the unpredictable rabble called citizens. Corporations should control politics, control the commons, control health care, control our airwaves, control the "free" market, and even control our schools. ...
<snip>
"Corporations and their CEOs are America's new feudal lords, and the new conservatives are their obliging servants and mouthpieces. The conservative mantra is: "Less government!" But the dirty little secret of the new conservatives is that just as nature abhors a vacuum, so also do politics and power. Every time government of, by, and for We, the People is pushed out of administering some part of this nation's vast commons, corporations step in. And by swamping the United States of America in debt with so-called "tax cuts," they seek to force an increasingly desperate government to cede more and more of our commons to their corporate rule.
<snip>
"But these are straw man arguments: What they are really advocating is corporate rule, and ultimately a feudal state controlled exclusively by the largest of the corporations. Smaller corporations, like individual humans and the governments they once hoped would protect them from powerful feudal forces, can watch but they can't play.
<snip -- please read the article for its details!>
"This is feudalism in its most raw and naked form, just as the kings and nobles of old sucked dry the resources of the people they claimed to own. It is in these arguments for unrestrained corporatism that we see the naked face of Hamilton's Federalists in the modern conservative movement. It's the face of wealth and privilege, of what Jefferson called a "pseudo-aristocracy," that works to its own enrichment and gain regardless of the harm done to the nation, the commons, or the "We, the People" rabble.
<snip>
"These new conservatives would have us trade in our democracy for a corporatocracy, a form of feudal government most recently reinvented by Benito Mussolini when he recommended a "merger of business and state interests" as a way of creating a government that would be invincibly strong. Mussolini called it fascism.
<snip>
"These corporate-embracing conservatives are not working for what's best for democracy, for America, or for the interests of "We, The People." They are explicitly interested in a singular goal: Profits and the power to maintain them. Under control, the desire for profit can be a useful thing, as 200 years of American free enterprise have shown.
"But unrestrained, as George Soros warns us so eloquently, it will create monopoly and destroy democracy. The new conservatives are systematically dismantling our governmental systems of checks and balances; of considering the public good when regulating private corporate behavior; of protecting those individuals, small businesses, and local communities who are unable to protect themselves from giant corporate predators. They want to replace government of, by, and for We, the People, with a corporate feudal state, turning America's citizens into their vassals and serfs.
"Only a public revolt in disgust over this unconscionable behavior will stop these new conservatives from turning America into a corporate-based clone of Mussolini's feudal vision. As Longfellow reminds us, "In the hour of darkness and peril and need/The people will waken and listen to hear."
"It is again that hour, and now is the time for we, the rabble, to re-awaken our fellow citizens.
(bolded emphasis added by dk)
Thom Hartmann <
[email protected] > is the author of over a dozen books, including "Unequal Protection" and "The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight," and the host of a nationally syndicated daily talk show <www.thomhartmann.com >. This article is copyright by Thom Hartmann, but permission is granted for reprint in print, email, blog, or web media so long as this credit is attached.
It's Mussolini's definition of fascism, the marriage of corporate and state power, that lends the tag "fascism" its weight now (insofar as it has weight). Perhaps the marriage occurred years ago, but I see a qualitative shift in the open unilateral abrasiveness and bullying of the current regime. This is something new. Such is my opinion.
If not "neo-fascist imperialism", then what language would you use then, any of you, to rally the rabble? In my case, to move the middle (knowing that elections, here in the U.S., are won or lost on just how the middle breaks on election day)? Give me memes! Give me soundbites and slogans! Such is the ammunition I seek.
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