Holy Terror, part 5: Fascism

There are a variety of "laws" that aren't passed by any legislature, yet seem to accurately describe a common aspect of every day life. The most famous is Murphy's Law: Anything that can go wrong, will. The internet and the web brought out many more, such as Moore's Law of 1970: The processing power of computers will double every two years.

Back in 1990 Mike Godwin created what is known as Godwin's Law: As online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1. For those who don't speak probability that means a comparison to Nazis will happen. Jon Stewart once did an episode of The Daily Show in which he replayed instances of leaders, left, right, and center who invoked fascism to slander opponents.

I'm well acquainted with the anti-gay crowd accusing us of being Nazis or acting like Hitler. It seems they resort to that because the terrors of the 1930s and '40s carry enough emotional baggage that their point is easily made in a way that will resonate with the common man (if it wasn't so stupidly inaccurate).

There is a corollary to Godwin's law: Once such a comparison is made the debate is over and the person making the claim loses.

And yet Mel White, in his book Holy Terror, Lies the Christian Right Tells Us to Deny Gay Equality not only compares Fundies to fascists, but spends 40 pages doing so. Doesn't Godwin's law and its corollary mean White has lost the debate? Well, no. "The law and its corollaries would not apply to discussions covering … totalitarian regimes and ideologies, if that was the explicit topic of conversation." On those 40 pages White does exactly that. One doesn't lose the debate when calling someone a fascist if that person really is a fascist.

First, a clarification or disclaimer. White is not implying that today's American Fundies are as brutal or deadly as Nazi's. What he is saying is that there are important similarities that should be examined.

Lawrence Britt is a businessman, novelist-historian, and fascinated by fascism. He studied he principles behind fascism in Germany, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Chile, and Indonesia (I didn't know there were so many). He came up with 14 identifying characteristics.

Strong and constant use of patriotism.

Disdain for human rights. There is always a security "need" that trumps rights, and torture is even approved.

Identification of enemies and scapegoats as a unifier against a common threat. Enemies include various minorities (such as us), liberals, commies, etc.

Supremacy of the military. Money spent on the military is taken from much needed domestic programs. Military service is glamorized.

Rampant sexism. The exclusive male leadership makes homophobia and opposition to abortion to be national policy.

Controlled mass media. When there isn't gov't censorship large media outlets are controlled by sympathetic corporations.

Obsession with national security. Fear is a great tool.

Religion and government are combined, even when gov't policy and religious doctrine supposedly conflict.

Corporate power is protected.

Labor power is suppressed.

Disdain for intellectuals and the Arts, because the arts are a source of free expression.

Obsession with crime and punishment with police given unlimited powers.

Rampant cronyism and corruption.

Fraudulent elections.

I look at this list and see the GOP. I've written many times about how the GOP is acting like fascists. I started with this post about how fascism rises. You can read all 46 of my posts here. Though I won't list details I hope you can go through the list above and think of times (likely many times) the GOP has done each of those.

Davidson Loehr makes the link between fascism and fundamentalism. He says Britt's list of 14 characteristics of fascism

mirrors the social and political agenda of religious fundamentalism worldwide. It is both accurate and helpful for us to understand fundamentalism as religious fascism, and fascism as political fundamentalism. They both come from very primitive parts of us that have always been the default setting of our species: amity towards our in-group, enmity toward out-groups, hirarchican deference to alpha male figures, a powerful identification with our territory, and so forth. It is that brutal default setting that all civilizations have tried to rise above, but it is always a fragile thing, civilization, and has to be achieved over and over and over again.

So go through that list again and think about how the Fundies have done each one – or at least are trying to. Rampant sexism? Still going strong. Patriotism? See the previous post of this series that discusses making an idol out of America. Obsession with security? What are Fundies saying about torture? Controlled mass media? They have their own networks and manage to be persistent voices in mainstream media for the sake of "balance." Corporate power protected? Do any of them decry what Wall Street did to bring about the Great Recession? Who is complaining about all those mortgage foreclosures? Disdain for the arts? Who pushes Congress to try to abolish the National Endowment for the Arts? Supremacy of the military? How often to Fundies invoke war imagery when discussing their enemies? Who is pushing to redefine the phrase in the constitution "Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion" normally referred to as the separation of church and state? I could go on.

White then takes the discussion into an interesting direction. He explores the question: What are personality traits of those most likely to support fascism? The answer comes from The Authoritarian Personality commissioned by the American Jewish Committee who wondered why Europeans were so willing to let Nazis murder six million Jews. The thousand-page report was issued in 1950. Those most likely to support fascism have these traits:

A desire for a strong leader. That desire results in a submissive, uncritical attitude towards authorities who become idealized moral authorities of the in-group.

Cultural narrowness that rigidly accepts the values of the in-group with a strong tendency to punish those who defy cultural norms.

Patriotic conformity that one's own nation is superior and should rightly dominate other nations, especially "enemy" nations.

Members of the out-groups are seen as stereotypes rather than as individuals.

Anti-introspection – resistance to self-understanding, to soul-searching, to cause-and-effect analysis of behavior. Belief in unexplainable phenomena. Disparages attempts to see life complexities.

Aggression towards an out-group that is declared to be intrinsically evil and must be eradicated to avoid contamination with the good.

White demonstrates that Fundie leaders, such as Jerry Falwell, understand these traits and appeal to them in their letters to stir their warriors to action. From a Falwell letter urging his followers to vote (for Bush): "We... may be God's instrument for saving America. … Shame on America for killing unborn babies and recognizing same-sex marriage … This election is clearly light against darkness. … May God bless America one more time. … We must elect the righteous into office who will see that righteousness prevail. … Any dummy knows what is means to vote Christian. … stir up a few extra million Americans to vote for someone who will not be soft on terrorism, who will hunt down and kill this evil man."

In 1944 Henry Wallace, Vice President under FDR, wrote an editorial in the New York Times about the dangers of the American Fascists. The public distaste for that opinion was enough for Roosevelt to dump Wallace and ask Harry Truman to be his running mate, which is how Truman got to be president. Wrote Wallace:

The American Fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information. With a Fascist the problem is never how to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the Fascist and his group more money or more power.

Always and everywhere they can be identified by their appeal to prejudice and by the desire to play upon the fears and vanities of different groups in order to gain power. It is no coincidence that the growth of modern tyrants has in every case been heralded by the growth of prejudice … It may be shocking to some people in this country to realize that, without meaning to do so, they hold views in common with Hitler when they preach discrimination against other religions, racial or economic groups.

White takes his comparison of Nazis and today's Fundies one more step. "The very same techniques that the Nazis used against the Jews during the early stages of their campaign to demean dehumanize, and demonize them are being used against us today."

White wants us to be clear about his own methods:

In drawing this comparison, I am not in any way suggesting that the suffering of America's sexual and gender minorities is equal to the suffering of European Jewry. However, there is no doubt that propaganda leading to fear and hatred of any people always ends in suffering, one victim at a time. The tragic deaths of Anne Frank, Emmett Till, and Matthew Shepard are a direct result of a very similar sequence of events. Once the blame game begins, the urge to purge follows quickly. The arrest, imprisonment, and murder of six million Jews and the destruction of almost five thousand Jewish communities were an almost predictable consequence of Hitler's propaganda campaign against them.

White then shows how similar the Nazi propaganda is to what Fundies are saying about us. The Jews were described as diseased, so are we. Jews were described as sexually perverted, so are we. Both groups are described as a threat to children (which we've heard many times), a threat to family and family values (also heard frequently), a threat to the nation, a threat to Christians and the Christian Church, sinful and fallen creatures condemned by God, people with too much power and privilege, and the enemy against whom war must be waged.

The list of characteristics that are present in fascism are also present in modern fundamentalist goals. The list of traits in those who support fascism are well known to fundamentalist leaders and they craft their messages to exploit those traits. The propaganda messages used by Nazis to demonize Jews are being used by fundamentalists to demonize sexual minorities.

Are fundamentalists fascists? They're certainly acting as if they are.