Will American Rightists Turn Fascists?

By: Michael_T_Bucci

From the perspective of a person born in the 1940s, America is thoroughly right-wing. President Obama has achieved the miraculous: he has radicalized his constituents to the Right while maintaining their delusions of being liberals, Democrats and progressives. But should the right-wing continue to move farther rightward, it can only move to one place: FASCISM!

An aside: In 1970, I was seated in Jordan Hall, Boston, listening to a performance of a Brahms symphony. Suddenly, I was overcome by a shift in reality. It was no longer 1970 in Boston, but the final days of WWII. I was no longer seated on Huntington Avenue but now was seated in a Berlin concert hall in Nazi Germany. I "sensed" Allied forces were less than 100 km from taking the city. But to paraphrase W.H. Auden, news of the imminent fall of Berlin was kept from the music.

Being a classical composer, I had known the Brahms piece intimately but knew only casual history about WWII. On this occasion, I heard elements in the Brahms symphony I never had heard before (or heard since!): folk and patriotic themes, anthems, marches and military leitmotivs. I realized that "embedded" within all cultural artifacts are signs, symbols and signatures stamped with the time and place of origin (a gestalt and zeitgeist). That to comprehend a historical period requires more than academic facts and synthesizing opinions of scholars. It would require the ability to time-travel. When the space/time shift lifted and my reality returned to 1970, I continued to ask myself the meaning of "experiencing" - if only for a few minutes - life in Nazi Germany.

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I have written too many warnings about fascism rising in America that writing more is to risk reducing the subject to conjecture. For one, you need only look for it to rise from within the ranks of the disaffected; particularly, from those individuals within the middle and working classes who today embrace any one or more political causes that share the label "anti-government". As critical as these people are of others who "depend" upon government, they "depend" upon opposing it. Ironically, the so-called "patriot", "nationalist", "sovereign citizen" and "constitutionalist" of today schooled by Tea Party campaigns of hatred for government, President Barack Obama, minorities, liberals, Islamists, the elderly and disabled, gays, unions, non-Christians, Asians, etc., could be readily transformed into the oppressor class of tomorrow if given a unifying emotional rationale, cohesion, financing and means. While thinking themselves protectors of "liberty", of the free-market, and warriors against fascism - which they claim is rising within government - an inside fascism can swell within their own ranks and contradict the very liberties they have sworn themselves to defend (e.g., the "liberator" becomes the oppressor; if opposed, democracy is abandoned "in order to save the Constitution"; the military, paramilitary, local and state law enforcement join ranks with "liberty loving" civilians and, in effect, together function as an oxymoron anti-government Government of "neo-loyalists", reversing their earlier role as latter-day American revolutionaries).

Though seemingly spread across disparate political movements, "anti-government" members share a common center. I classify their groups as "political cells" that await an event, an incident (casus belli) and a galvanizing leader before forming themselves (or being formed) into a united front. The product of such a movement could result in a government coup from which emerges a despotic oligarchy comprised of the very individuals who underwrite the present "anti-government" phenomena. In this century alone, US inspired and engineered "anti-government" political movements in the middle-east have been used repeatedly and with success to orchestrate similar "regime changes". This is a reminder of what can happen (or is in the process of happening) in America (and who might be standing behind the curtains).

From the perspective of Sinclair Lewis in 1935, fascism would come to America "wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross". Today, he might add: "and wearing a libertarian veneer".

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In Greece of 2013, the far-right party Golden Dawn unabashedly admits it is fascistic; its membership is rising. In America, such a movement would need to be called "Liberty" to fly under radar. But in either country, any imposed, painful and sadistic austerity measures are only about money owed to creditors (and I emphasize the word "only"). The Greek fascists are directing people to burn store fronts of Pakistani shop owners and target socialists, immigrants and foreigners, not creditors, bond vigilantes or bankers; while the American fascists . . . well, they are busy doing much of the same: generating hate, fear, paranoia, conspiracy theories, xenophobia, nationalism, ethnocentrisms, racism, militarism, societal conflict. (Is your favorite politician, writer, religious leader or talk-show host one of these people?) Meanwhile, creditors get paid; bond vigilantes and bankers grow richer.

If two people want to kill me, I will thwart them by turning each against the other. At least one will die and I will have a greater chance to live. If I want to control a nation, I will first divide, then subdivide people; divided people are weakened people and weak people can be led into becoming defeated people. I then will cause them to blame each other for crimes I committed and crimes I will safely continue to commit in the absence of their opposition.

* * *

It was not a hallucination that overtook me in Jordan Hall in 1970. Thirty-seven years later, in 2007, I located the 1945 concert schedule of the Berlin Philharmonic which confirmed three major points contained in my 1970 "experience". 1) Brahms Symphony #1 was performed in a Berlin concert hall; 2) in the final days of WWII by Wilhelm Furtwangler ("Hitler's conductor"); 3) on January 23, 1945, a date when the Red Army was just 48 km from Berlin and about to take the city. How did I know? The truthful answer is: "because I was there".

The Native American believes that events cast two shadows: one after the event, and one BEFORE the event (hence: predictions, right or wrong).

Although that "experience" was then and this is now, my intuition remains steadfast, and I trust it. It was a flashback in 1970 to a time and place in history (Nazi Germany) that chronologically occurred before I was born. It demonstrated a human's ability to conquer linear time and finite space in order to gain understanding, which knowledge alone cannot supply. It is a flash-ahead, if you will, now to fear fascism rising from disaffected angry mobs purposely provoked by media and religious propagandists who are well-paid by billionaire-provocateurs whose sole motivations rest in increasing their share of national wealth - be that wealth from nations on the EU periphery, UK or America. These people are called "Vultures" by writer and market analyst Darryl Schoon in his book The Time of the Vulture. As the right-wing chants "Liberty", I chant "Democracy". We need both, and we need JUSTICE FOR ALL. We will have neither if government is run by monetary technocrats responding to "market forces" - and this is exactly where the Western world is heading: into a state of "post-Democracy" and into autocracy of, by and for "the markets".

When investors, speculators and market players despotically control the destiny of nations for reasons of pure self-interest and personal gain, they too are deemed fascists.

Fascist regimes of the 20th Century were defeated and destroyed at a cost of tens of millions of lives. America is young and has been spared many cruelties of history. Does she need to experience fascism in order to rediscover and re-appreciate her birthright?

* * *

Embedded within all cultural artifacts are signs, symbols and signatures stamped with the time and place of origin. To understand and access history, we need the ability to time-travel. To foresee the future, we need to access an event before it has occurred in our continuum. Neither is impossible because no event, action or thought is ever lost. Once dropped into the sea, it is forever within the sea, wherever she might take it.

* * *

Humankind will subject each generation to battles between life and death, good and evil, feast and famine. These are cycles fit for savages and barbarians. The world knows better.

For now, evolution will seem postponed for the many by the few. But this too shall pass.

By Michael T Bucci

Contact: mbucci@michaelbucci.com

Michael T Bucci is a retired public relations executive from New Jersey presently residing in New England. His essays have appeared at The Market Oracle. He is the author of nine books on practical spirituality including White Book: Cerithous.

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