I have purported that what we are witnessing in the United States, and indeed the world, is neither socialism not fascism in their purest forms, but an entirely new phenomenon - international fascism.
Those who see the difference between fascism and communism as the difference between left and right politics are sorely missing the point. Both ideologies are means to the end of aggregating power in a ruling elite [1]. International fascism would be an application of fascist principles to international politics, in this case, under the rubric of a neomarxist agenda.
People who believe fascism to be primarily nationalist, racist, and anti-semitic have a conception of the political system as defined by circumstantial manifestations - fascism is an ideology of unity in a great leader or party. It is characterized by command control of the economy, intense political propaganda, and a police state apparatus that tramples the rights of individuals. Whether the cleavages the ruler(s) choose to accentuate or exploit is class, ethnicity, nation, or religion (or some combination of these) - it is a matter of the flavor of a given fascism at hand, not a matter of distinct political ruling principles. Fascism can even theoretically be extrapolated out to the world stage, with nations as the distinct cleavages to be 'unified' by a great leader (likely acting on behalf of a governing body of aspiring oligarchs). The great leader is the public relations persona, the charming, smiling "face" of the organization.
Before we consider the evidence on how the current world trend may be characterized as heading toward 'international fascism,' let us give some color to the concepts.
The great leader is usually a classic narcissist. He can be extremely dangerous, especially in the face of public ridicule. He believes himself to be a Hegelian "big man of history" who is ahead of his time and the embodiment of the Zeitgeist. The great leader's arrogance and narcissism can easily be publicly received as self-confidence, but this is usually a false image: Narcissists can be notoriously sensitive when it comes to criticism. The great leader usually wields what Max Weber referred to as "charismatic authority." He is a well-trained liar and manipulator. He may feel himself to be as a canvass upon which the collective paints their desires. This feeling of unity with the masses can feed into egomania and megalomania. Grandiose plans and desires may feel easily within reach. He may perceive himself or herself to be specially anointed by God. There have been great leaders who believed themselves to be gods, or acting in the aegis of God.
Control of the economy in collectivist regimes is carried out in many different ways. Private property may be abolished, but this is very rare; more common is the seizure and re-distribution of quasi-private property by the state. Capital may be abolished, but again this is highly impractical; so many collectivist regimes issue internal currency or industrial credits (similar in concept to "carbon credits"). Regulations may channel business into desired production, may kill small businesses in the interest of larger ones, and can potentially control the economy through a system of prohibitions. There are a myriad of means to control economies and the most effective is to control the currency through a central bank. Central banks can trigger an economic crisis through overly rapid and massive inflation of the money supply or alternatively, a sudden constriction of the money supply - both can play right into the ruling elites' hands. The chaos that ensues from a collapse of the currency demands swift and strong government action. Never let a good crisis go to waste, as it has been remarked.
The fascist regime is saturated with political propaganda. Politics infiltrates every sphere of life, and privacy seems to dissolve, like salt in a solution. Neighbors may spy on their neighbors, children on their parents, wives on their husbands, and teachers on their students. Speech is highly charged and explosive, leading to convenient calls to have it more regulated (thus cutting off dialogue and leading directly to frustration and violence). Television ads, billboards, newspaper and magazine articles, radio "PSAs" (propaganda service announcements), inundate the citizen with praise and support for the policies of the government and support for the great leader.
Last but not least comes the police state. It is inevitable in a command economy that an overly controlling central government unleashes a host of unintended consequences. A market economy is founded on, and is most sensitive to, the demand of each individual for a desired good or service at any given moment. This is not merely a matter of idiosyncracies, but what medical treatment he requires, what kind of food he wants to eat, how much, and when, what kind of exercise he needs to do and how much - it is inconceivable that millions of individual, distinct human beings can be programmed to operate in a desired manner by a few hundred politicians in Washington. But this doesn't stop the government from trying. As the central government's best-laid plans inevitably go awry, more and more regulations attempt to dam the problems in, but they eventually overflow the system of levees the government puts into place.
The government then needs to make examples out of people - to frighten the rest of the population. This leads to outrage and human outcry. The government feels vulnerable and exposed and cracks down on the people, leading to frustration and the potential for violence.
This is when it gets very tricky. The population can initiate violence, leading to a brutal crackdown, which the government will claim is justified. The government can feel threatened and take swift action on its own, usually framing a culprit or scapegoat before making its move. The government mobilizes into police state mode to protect itself, and the road to serfdom goes into full swing.
Many people think that it cannot happen here, in the "exceptional" United States. But the signs are all around for anyone to take notice of and compare to totalitarian regimes of the past. The propagandizing of children, the deification of a great leader, the nationalization of industry, the control of the currency, the overwhelming media propaganda, the attempt to create crises that demand swift and strong government action - does this not describe what is taking place in this country now?
Let us consider a few points. First of all, it is understood that all checks and balances in terms of party control are gone. Furthermore, the checks and balances between the central government and the states are utterly ignored. Now consider it a step further: What if the ideological checks and balances are gone? What if the radical socialists and corporatist fascists are cooperating together as elites?
Wonder why the Republicans are only shadow-boxing with the Democrats when it comes to matters of national security? Why they continually put up lame non-conservative presidential candidates? It is likely because a lot of what passes for partisan politics is a smoke and mirrors game.
It has been difficult to prove that the Republicans and the Democrats are nearly on the same page in regards to selling out our national sovereignty (think illegal immigration, e.g.) and instituting a more oligarchical system for those not disposed to what they consider "conspiracy theories." But the Bolsheviks were a conspiracy before they became the rulers of the Soviet Union. The Nazis were a conspiracy before they took over Germany and committed the Holocaust. So what do we need to back up the argument that there is a left-right alliance bent on controlling the United States and re-directing it in the direction of a weakened subordinate position and global wealth redistribution?
We must acknowledge that the agreed-upon rubric for "world unity" has been global warming or "climate change," which has been going through some trouble due to, ironically enough, climate change and a cooling period. Thus, shockingly, "Science Czar" John Holdren has just announced that a man-made Ice Age will kill over one billion unless we cede the government more power!
Why is the left insistent on trying to preserve the "climate change" narrative (as if we already forgot about global warming)? Because science and "pragmatism" are the perfect cover for a left-right alliance (think Newt Gingrich and Nancy Pelosi in an infamous pitch on climate change legislation). Giving up one's freedom is the sensible, "scientific" thing to do, after all.
The greens are the heirs of the reds, brown shirts, and black shirts. They are ruthless, and I argue, even more dangerous than the Nazis. At least the Nazis left Aryans off their list of groups marked for extermination; to radical greens like Holdren, the enemy of the world is mankind. Of course, not everyone is as hard a leftist as Holdren, who has called for a so-called planetary regime and has suggested the forced sterilization of undesirables.
So under the big neomarxist umbrella of the environmentalist movement, the left is attempting to bring in not only radical groups and unions, but powerful corporations. The APOLLO alliance is one of the key operators in bringing these radical and supposedly "right-wing" forces together. But big corporations are not averse to environmental legislation of certain kinds because they have the best-placed lobbyists to acquire subsidies and get favorable regulations that hurt their competitors and boost market share. Consider growing big corporations as a sort of collectivism of the private sector, which collectivists in government want to nurture and eventually take over. All in the interest of the public good, of course.
So how can we examine the cross-breeding of the left and right in their natural habitat? There are a few websites where one can track the donations of large corporations to radical leftists. Just one of them is Activist Cash. It is illustrative to see corporations like ALCOA, GE, and Caterpillar donating millions to leftist super-funds like the Tides Foundation, which legally launder money to unsavory radical types for big businesses. There are number of transactions that only make sense if the radical-conservative ideological split is a relic of the past, and the American public is just now finding out.
Let us look at a few of these jaw-dropping left-right alliances. But first we should note that such "donations" may indicate bribe money to get environmentalists off their corporate backs and may not necessarily be a sign of ideological fellow-traveling. But there is little to suggest that corporations disagree with the leftists substantially because corporations are not funding the pro-market opposition. According to discoverthenetworks.org, leftist groups raise approximately 26 times what "conservative" groups (defined as pro-market and not pro-conservative) do when it comes to funding.
Examples of corporations or foundations built on corporations who donate to leftist causes (Source: Activist Cash.): Alcoa, Annenberg Foundation, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, AT&T Foundation, Bank of America, Carnegie Corporation of New York, Citigroup Foundation, DaimlerChrysler Corporation, Ford Foundation, General Motors Foundation, J.P. Morgan Charitable Trust, Merck Family Fund, Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Rockefeller Foundation,
This is but the tip of the iceberg for documenting the burgeoning left-right alliance. The poster child is not even on this list: General Electric. GE owns the Democrat mouthpiece MSNBC, and has benefited financially for its cozy relationship with Barack Obama, under the guidance of CEO Jeffrey Immelt.
Then there is Goldman Sachs, whose relations with Treasury and the SEC is so intimate and so disgusting it smacks one of a Roseanne Barr-Tom Arnold sex tape (so needless to say we won't go into it in great depth here). WSJ gives more than an ample glimpse of this debauchery, however.
Caterpillar. General Motors. Wal-Mart. Oh God, even Wal-Mart. All kissing the ring of leftist power. Is this merely a move of self-preservation in a climate of surging leftism?
I highly doubt it. Most of the country is conservative. Presidents govern from the middle in America or they are thrown out. (This is something Bill Clinton had to find out before it was too late.) So any victories accomplished by the left would theoretically be short-lived. Unless this is all just a game, that is.
Global corporations and foundations headed by aspiring oligarchs (George Soros and David Rockefeller to name a few) are undermining U.S. sovereignty with such agreements as last month's at the G-20 that the Federal Reserve and the Treasury are to submit progress reports to the IMF on the nation's progress implementing the international fascist agenda. Their mutual goal is to empower global corporations by crushing their competition with environmental regulations and to promote interdependence among former nation-states.
Most saliently, this entails humbling (if not destroying) the United States as an independent world power. A huge blow would be moving in on a compromised dollar and implementing a reserve currency as its replacement. He would holds the currency holds the power, as the IMF and its backers know well.
Obama's recent call to "abolish" nuclear weapons smacks naive, but it is much worse. It shows that Obama could even ponder disbanding nuclear weapons unilaterally, if he could get away with it. Such a move, even if it weren't straight out of a Robert Zemeckis film, would only serve to empower Al Qaeda, the Al Aqsa Martyr's Brigade, et al. (not to mention China and Russia).
But before this announcement was Obama's move to drop the ABM defense shield in Europe, which made Russia ecstatic. And it gets worse. Obama is now botching the wars in the Middle East with weak rules of engagement and a failure to implement a cogent strategy (if there actually is one). Israel is being warned by the administration not to attack Iran. Obama has kissed the ring a of Saudi ruler. Obama is supporting socialist dictators like Chavez, Lula, Zelaya, Ortega, the Castros - any Latin or South American dictator will do apparently.
This isn't world peace - this is the world going to pieces. And then who will save us?
[1] See Robert Michels' "Iron Law of Oligarchy" in his Political Parties (224-235).
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