Ur-Fascism in the USA

When Fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross - Attributed to Sinclair Lewis

While the author of It Can't Happen Here may not have actually said this, the spirit of the quotation is more poignant today than it was even in the 1930s when fascism really was on the rise. While everyone should read the cautionary tale of how fragile democracy can be, how the masses can be manipulated by would be dictators, and how difficult it can be to distinguish a real dyed-in-the-wool fascist from a dangerous but ineffectual bully, praising this story is not the primary goal of this essay.

So many words have been written about the bad ideologies; authoritarianism and its offshoots, fascism, Nazism, totalitarianism, communism, and so many images placed in popular memory about them that so many people are guarding the wrong gates. The first misconception to address is that fascism does not equal Nazism. Being on the lookout for fascism in America, you can more or less safely ignore the occasional skinhead. While they may be dangerous in person, in close proximity, someone in a Neo-Nazi uniform is not likely to attract a mass following. A real fascist in America is likely to be the one denouncing the skinhead louder than anyone else, and public racism, government spying, censorship, etc. because words and actions in fascism are inherently out of joint. This is a chameleonic philosophy that can say or do anything because the end is what is important. Fascism is intolerant of everything except its own contradictions and that is why Orwellian doublethink functions so well in fascism and its enablers.

Before the mass rallies, before the book burnings, before the violence, fascism creeps in among the disaffected as an underlying second layer behind the words. Like a virus slips in undetected to take control of a cell, fascism waits under conscious thoughts until the time is right for it to ignite. This is the eternal fascism as analyzed by Umberto Eco. Ur-fascism is very difficult to spot because it mutates so readily within a culture, but any one of the fourteen features Eco identified is enough to allow undiagnosed fascism to fester until it strikes. The reason guarding against Nazism, as so many on the American Right do to the point of absurdity, is practically useless is that ur-fascism is exactly that, eternal. Eco noted that ur-fascism is not grounded in any historical expression but is obsessed with a primordial truth that was revealed and then lost. There are no empirical examples that ur-fascism needs for expression, it is both new and ancient at the same time and thus tolerates contradictions because any document or myth can only reveal a sliver of that truth.

For the common American fascist, that truth is revealed in his understanding of our foundational documents. The Constitution is a part of that primordial truth, it exists outside of history alongside that other ahistorical document, the Holy Bible, and they both contain the elementary essence of humanity. No thinking or understanding needed. As these documents are interpretations of truth larger than any mortal author can grasp, the "mistakes" that do not say what he wants to hear can be explained away by his superiors who possess the gift of divining the secret truth. That the secrets just happen to line up exactly with what he wants to believe simply confirms the universality of his beliefs.

The leader who can convincingly preach the truth will earn a following of true believers who will defend his every horrible action and attack the unbelievers who dare question his motives. Adorno and his colleagues may have been criticized for many of their findings and conclusions in The Authoritarian Personality but it is undeniable that fascists exist, both leaders and followers. It is also undeniable that their ranks swell during periods of upheaval and/or shock. The great irony is that American fascists scream the loudest about freedom and liberty but are the most willing to submit and obediently surrender their freedom.

The freedom most dear to the American fascist is the freedom to conform. Second is the freedom from worry that comes with thinking. Perhaps not unique to American fascism but vitally important is the freedom from responsibility towards your fellow citizens; in other words the freedom to be selfish. Eco characterizes many features of ur-fascism as cults, the cult of tradition, the cult of action, the cult of technology, the cult of heroism, and of permanent war. These contradictory ideals are never settled but as Bob Altemeyer discovered during decades of research on the authoritarian personality is that fascists are okay with that. The secret to accepting so many contradictions is in compartmentalized thinking, and this is a feature the American system excels in. We are taught from kindergarten that there is a time for everything, play time, learning time, nap time. Later this is expanded in school and bells chime when it is time to drop everything and switch subjects. It is a short leap for the mind to start putting conflicting concepts in separate mental boxes and only draw on one at a time. Thus can the fascist hold racist views and react with violent anger when witnessing racism, because another box tells him that racism is bad.

There is no way around the another very important point of applying Eco to American fascism, contempt for the weak. Fascism is both popular as a mass political movement and elitist as a hierarchical system. This is what differentiates fascism from simple authoritarianism, it must originate in a democratic or parliamentary system where voters can choose their government. Similarly, that government must be perceived as rotten. It does not matter that the system was broken by the fascist leaders themselves. The government is so broken that we need a strong leader who will unite us and purge the degenerates and filth from the land. It is simply amazing how strongly the myth persists that government taxes the productive, sober, white men and gives to "them." How often does the bumper sticker slogan "work harder, millions on welfare are depending on you" appear? American fascists are so angry at the poor while claiming to be good Christians. In recent years this hatred and contempt has expanded to government workers, especially teachers. Why?

It would be best to simply end this essay with Eco's words verbatim.

The rejection of the modern world was disguised as a rebuttal of the capitalistic way of life. The Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, is seen as the beginning of modern depravity. In this sense Ur-Fascism can be defined as irrationalism.3. Irrationalism also depends on the cult of action for action's sake.
Action being beautiful in itself, it must be taken before, or without, reflection. Thinking is a form of emasculation. Therefore culture is suspect insofar as it is identified with critical attitudes. Distrust of the intellectual world has always been a symptom of Ur-Fascism, from Hermann Goering's fondness for a phrase from a Hanns Johst play ("When I hear the word 'culture' I reach for my gun") to the frequent use of such expressions as "degenerate intellectuals," "eggheads," "effete snobs," and "universities are nests of reds." The official Fascist intellectuals were mainly engaged in attacking modern culture and the liberal intelligentsia for having betrayed traditional values.
4. The critical spirit makes distinctions, and to distinguish is a sign of modernism.
In modern culture the scientific community praises disagreement as a way to improve knowledge. For Ur-Fascism, disagreement is treason.
5. Besides, disagreement is a sign of diversity.
Ur-Fascism grows up and seeks consensus by exploiting and exacerbating the natural fear of difference. The first appeal of a fascist or prematurely fascist movement is an appeal against the intruders. Thus Ur-Fascism is racist by definition.

Everything that has come out of the American Right in recent years has been witnessed by history before. We simply need to understand it for what it is and stop reinforcing their frames by pretending the radical reaction coming from national GOP leaders, traitorous industrialists like the Koch brothers, all the way down to your angry uncle who screams about welfare cheats and illegal immigrants is "conservatism" because it is not.

It can't happen here

A poignant book review written when I was still but a small fry. That's sea monster humor son, get with the program.

Fascism in America: an all-too real work of fiction

            In Sinclair Lewis’ novel It can’t happen here, totalitarianism overthrows our constitutional government in the guise of down home traditional values. Set just before the 1936 election, Berzelius “Buzz” Windrip, a fictional Southern Democratic Senator with a demagogue’s flair and team of cynical operators behind him, sweeps into power on the promise of redistributing wealth to all the workers of America. Oh, and he has a 15 point platform to subvert Congress and the Supreme Court, throw unemployed people into camps and specific plans for all of the enemies of our country, namely Jewish bankers, communists and African-Americans among other things. This story sends a chilling message to Americans that benign, liberal government is not written in stone and the constitution is just a piece of paper unless good people stand up for what’s right.
          Sinclair Lewis was “the first American to win the Nobel Prize for Literature”; he wrote novels critical of rural America, the dreariness, materialism and perils of ambition found there. (The Sinclair Lewis Society) “His concern with issues involving women, race, and the powerless in society make his work still vital and pertinent today.” (SLS) His wife was instrumental in this book’s inspiration as she had interviewed Hitler in 1931 and discussed European political developments at that time with her husband, who was at the same time seeing, “the irrational demagoguery of Huey Long and Father Coughlin and the proliferation in America of fanatical political groups” (Tanner 57) “Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer bought the film rights… with Lionel Barrymore cast in the lead role, but early in 1936 the film was abandoned… for fear of international complications and the displeasure of the Republican Party.” (Tanner 58) The objection of the GOP is odd, in my view, since the leader of the resistance is a Republican. In any case, It can’t happen here would have to wait until 1983 to be brought to the small screen as the mini-series “V” in which the fascists are recast as extraterrestrials. (Wikipedia)

            The reader sees events mainly through the eyes of a small town newspaper editor, Doremus Jessup, an educated, intelligent man of sixty years who sees through the façade around Buzz. Nestled away in an archetypal small New England town called Fort Beulah, Vermont; Doremus feels that even if the insanity surrounding the Windrip candidacy doesn’t subside, he figures that life will go on. Personally, Doremus is a “small-town bourgeois Intellectual”, “a mild, rather indolent and somewhat sentimental Liberal”. (68-9) None the less, his editorials often took a position considerably to the left of his readers and when “[h]e got named Bolshevik… his paper lost a hundred and fifty out of its five thousand circulation” (69) Life does go on, but with horrible consequences for Doremus when his gardener, Shad Ledue, becomes the new county commissioner and takes revenge on his former employer for perceived past slights.

          If Doremus is the hero, the villains are played by a remarkable coterie of individuals and organizations committed to wrenching the reins of power into their own hands.  Buzz himself was a powerful orator, after hearing him speak in New York City and being deftly moved by it; Doremus remarked to himself “[b]ut what Mr. Windrip actually had said, [he] could not remember an hour later, when he had come out of the trance.” (140) Bishop Paul Peter Prang was a radio preacher whose “League of Forgotten Men” delivered to the senator votes in order to win, these are characterizations of the late Huey Long and Father Coughlin that Mr. Lewis was so concerned with addressing. (60-1) Muscle was provided by Colonel Dewey Haik and his paramilitary Minute Men, “a nationwide league of Windrip marching-clubs… the shock troops of Freedom!” (129-30) Intellectual power was provided by Lee Sarason and Dr. Hector MacGoblin, who coined the phrases and songs used by the campaign to more or less distract people and persuade them to vote the right way. The new regime’s ideology was called “corpoism” after the United States was renamed “The American Corporate State” with Windrip soon becoming “The Chief” instead of the president. (142, 214)
            The country was reorganized into Provinces, Districts and counties; with the old geographical distinctions being discarded. The unemployed were rounded up into “enormous labor camps” to work on state projects or hired out to the private sector. (216) Political opponents (like Doremus and most of his friends, eventually) were eventually interned in concentration camps for torture and often execution when “caught trying to escape” (422) The corpos preferred method of torture was a combination of flogging with a “steel fishing rod” and forcing the victim to drink caster oil. (423) Eventually Doremus escapes to Canada and joins the resistance, which does invade and take control of a large area of the US. However, the counterrevolution bogs down and the book ends in a stalemate, even though it is clear that corpoism is largely a spent force due to overreach.  By the novel’s finish, much intrigue has occurred at the top leaving Buzz exiled, Sarason assassinated and Col. Haik as the new Chief.
           This book was written in 1935, before Americans fully understood what totalitarianism was and it was subsequently turned into a play for the WPA theatre, perhaps as a reminder to stick with the mostly moderate policies of Franklin Roosevelt. I feel this novel is overshadowed by George Orwell’s 1984, also warning against totalitarianism of the Stalinist formulation, which was published after the full horrors of World War II were revealed. But Lewis predicted quite a few of the horrors of fascism, right down to concentration camp inmates betraying each other to get out. (430) I believe this story, told on the stage and on the page, helped inoculate America against fascism and in that way played a small part in saving the world from fascism during the 1930’s and 40’s. Paraphrasing Edmund Burke, Doremus comments that: “The tyranny of this dictatorship isn’t primarily the fault of Big Business, nor of the demagogues who do their dirty work. It’s the fault of Doremus Jessup! Of all the conscientious, respectable, lazy-minded Doremus Jessups who have let the demagogues wriggle in, without fierce enough protest.” (258)
            The author’s wife, Dorothy Thompson, “was an expert on European fascism” and no doubt a major source of research, however the edition I read contained no acknowledgements. (Tanner 59) The edition also lacked a preface and I was left somewhat unmoored at the beginning of the story, with only a passing knowledge of the content it took a while to orient myself in this world. Mr. Lewis mentions so many real-life individuals mixed with his fictional characters it was sometimes hard to differentiate them, a reader without historical knowledge of the period and the several references to the Civil War era that Doremus draws strength and reflection from. The book paints a lucid picture, with most of the good guys in the story unable to believe what has happened and even less able to protect themselves from the madness; a representative example is Dr. Fowler Greenhill, who attempts to rescue his father-in-law Doremus from jail and give the local corpos a piece of his mind as though freedom of speech and due process of law still existed and is summarily shot on one corpo’s whim. (269-72)
            Although I could hardly put this book down I did find it overly detailed, with too many simultaneous plot-lines going on at once and far too many characters. I can imagine that this chaotic style helped to reinforce the chaotic events described; and the extensive character development certainly helps the political discussions in the book seem less like the author arguing with himself. “In a remarkable burst of creative energy in 1935, [Lewis] wrote It Can’t Happen Here in a matter of weeks, and his publisher rushed it into print.” (Tanner 57) As such, it is a remarkable effort and great public service, relevant to all Americans interesting in preserving the rule of law in our nation. Above that it is valuable to a college course on this time period because it does an excellent job of relating what life was like in the 1920’s and 1930’s; mentioning the technological innovations, political atmosphere and above all translating the rise of  home-grown fascism for people who think that revolution and dictatorship can only happen elsewhere.