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* by Paul Bigioni, Toronto Star, November 27 2005 * by Paul Bigioni, Toronto Star, November 27 2005
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*] "I was a Republican from before the fascists took over."


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It has been suggested that Fascism (United States) be merged into this article. (Discuss)
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This page pertains to fascism after World War II. For a discussion of groups and movements that also include as core tenets racial nationalism, antisemitism, and praise for Hitler, see Neo-Nazism. For neofascist groups associated with a religious identity or theology, see Neofascism and religion. For analysis of where fascism fits on the left/right ideological spectrum, see Fascism and ideology. Some groups called neo-fascist are more accurately described as part of the dissident far right or revolutionary extreme right.

Neo-fascism is the term used to describe a range of groups emerging after the Second World War that display significant elements of Fascism, or Clerical Fascism. First adopted in Italy during the 1930s, Fascism spread across Europe between World War I and World War II. Neofascism is the term used to describe fascist movements active after World War II.

The definitional debates and arguments by academics over the nature of fascism fill entire bookshelves. Fascism is an authoritarian extreme rightpolitical movement. Its roots have been traced by some scholars, such as Zeev Sternhell, to the revolutionary extreme left movement, as it mixed, in its first stage, social policies with nationalist ideology.

Allegations that a group is neofascist are often hotly contested. Sometimes the term is used as a hyperbolic political attack that uses the term fascism as a politic epithet or slur.

In some cases the term Neo-Fascist (note uppercase 'F') is claimed by movements that express a specific admiration for Benito Mussolini, the insignia of Fascist Italy (e.g. the fasces, the Roman salute) and features specific to Fascist Italy. This usually includes ultranationalism, nativism, and various illiberal attitudes.

Neo-fascist (note lowercase 'f') movements can draw on an eclectic mix of attachment to Italian Fascism, German Nazism, and the fascisms of other nations.

Regimes often called fascist after World War Two

Argentina (1946-1955 and 1973-1974) - Juan Perón admired Mussolini and established his own pseudo-fascist regime, although it has been more often considered a right-wing populist. After he died, his third wife and vice-president Isabel Perón was deposed by a military junta, after a short interreign characterized by support to the neo-fascist Argentine Anticommunist Alliance (la Triple A). Similarities are best drawn, though, with the Vargas regime of Brazil (1930-1945; 1950-1954).

South Africa (1948-1994) - Many scholars have labelled the apartheid system built by Malan and Verwoerd as a type of fascism. Whether it was a fascist regime or an example of a socially conservative administration with excessive powers is hotly debated. The racial and nationalist ideas were implanted inside the South African regime, however the economic structure of the country was not as regulated as that of a typically fascist state.

Guatemala (1953-1980s) - Mario Sandoval Alarcón, a self-declared fascist, headed the National Liberation Movement after a coup d'état, supported by the US, overthrew the democratic government of Col. Jacobo Arbenz. Sandoval became known as the "godfather of the death squads" during the Guatemalan military's 30-year counter-insurgency campaign and at one point served as Guatemala's vice president.

Rhodesia (1965-1978) - The racial segregation system by Ian Smith is similarly considered by some to be a form of fascism. See the comments of South Africa.

Lebanon (1982-1988) - The right wing Christian Phalangist Party, backed by its own private army and inspired by the Spanish Falangists, was nominally in power in the country during the 1980s but had limited authority over the highly factionalised state, two-thirds of which was occupied by Israeli and Syrian troops. Phalangists, trained and supported by Israel carried out the Sabra and Shatila Massacre in 1982.

Iran (1950-1953) - Under the Iranian National Front, during the regime of Mohammad Mossadegh, attacks on the political left were led by right-wing groups with fascistic elements including the Iranian Nation Party, led by Dariush Forouhar; the Sumka (The National Socialist Iranian Workers Party) led by Dr. Davud Monshizadeh; and Kabud (Iranian Nazi Party) founded by Habibollah Nobakht.

Neo-Fascism and Italy

Organizations that have been described as 'Neo-Fascist' include;

Since the 1990s, Alleanza Nazionale has distanced itself from Mussolini and fascism and made efforts to improve relations with Jewish groups, with most die-hards leaving it; it now seeks to present itself as a respectable rightwing party. Lega Nord is primarily a secessionist movement, but has often been accused of xenophobia and racism; however, it has also lately presented its goals as a more moderate quest for local autonomy.

Neo-Fascism and religion (Islam, Christianity, Judaism etc)

See main article, Neofascism and religion.

Neo-Fascism and the United States

Critics making this claim come from a variety of political viewpoints. The claim that the United States is fascistic remains dubious and fiercely debated, with few scholars supporting the claim.

This idea was first brought up in the cautionary novel It Can't Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis. Cases have been made both for and against this allegation on all sides of the political spectrum.

Historic view from the Right

A small number of libertarians and ultraconservatives argue that the U.S. has been imposing a fascist system of government since the New Deal.

There was also an alleged plot against Roosevelt to remove him from office by military coup. In 1933, retired General Smedley Butler testified to the McCormack-Dickstein Committee that he had been approached by a group of wealthy business interests, led by the Du Pont and J. P. Morgan industrial empires, to orchestrate a fascist coup against Roosevelt. The alleged coup attempt has come to be known as the Business Plot.

While Mussolini cartelized Italian industry with his "Fascist Confederation of Industry," critics argue that Franklin D. Roosevelt centralized US industry under the National Recovery Act, which was later ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. Theorists such as Gabriel Kolko saw some parallels between Mussolini, Hitler, and Roosevelt.

The central argument is that while similar to state socialism in its authoritarianism, fascism prefers state control over ostensibly private property rather than nationalization as carried out by Roosevelt. According to Joseph R. Stromberg:

"More recently, historians have taken a second look at the actual structural parallels in these corporatist experiments. While it is now generally agreed that corporatism survived the demise of fascism, it can also be asked whether fascism survived its supposed death."

In 1954, Richard Hofstadter chided those who had worried about "several close parallels" between FDR’s N.R.A. and fascist corporatism.

In 1944, John T. Flynn made the case in "As We Go Marching," where he enumerated the stigmata of generic fascism, surveyed the interwar policies of Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, and pointed to uncomfortably similar American policies.

For Flynn, the hallmarks of fascism were:
  • 1) unrestrained government;
  • 2) an absolute leader responsible to a single party;
  • 3) a planned economy with nominal private ownership of the means of production;
  • 4) bureaucracy and administrative "law";
  • 5) state control of the financial sector;
  • 6) permanent economic manipulation via deficit spending;
  • 7) militarism, and
  • 8) imperialism (pp. 161-62).
He proceeded to show that all these were alive and well under the wartime New Deal administration (pp. 166-258).

"Pragmatic American liberalism had produced 'a genteel fascism' without the ethnic persecutions and full-scale executive dictatorship seen overseas." - Joseph R. Stromberg, Fascism: Déjà Vu All Over Again

Sources

From the Right

Some on the political right have long argued that statism represents a form of fascism in the U.S. See: Fascism on the Right

Richard Rahn, a senior fellow of the Discovery Institute and adjunct scholar of the Cato Institute states:

"Despite the election of a 'compassionate conservative' as president, federal spending is again growing faster than national income, even excluding the new military spending, in large part due to a bipartisan effort to enlarge government. The laudable effort made in the late 1990s to get rid of most farm subsidies is now in the process of being thrown out. Free trade is under attack and protectionism is again emerging, and the recent 'campaign finance reform' legislation is a direct attack on free speech.

The new fascism is not just a danger for Europeans; it is a present danger for us."

Clinton Administration

There continues to remain conservative, libertarian, and independent view points that the Bill Clinton administration was fascist. They point to Clinton's attempt to "centralize" the financial and economic markets and to socialize the economy. They also suggest a liberal control of the media and contend that the media worked in collusion with the administration. Likewise, many of Hillary Clinton's policies have been criticized as fascist.

Certain actions taken by Clinton during his administration have also caused critics to call his administration Fascist:

Chip Berlet, of the think tank Political Research Associates, disagrees with this analysis, and wrote that a mythic conspiracy theory generated by right-wing conspiracists created the idea in several sectors of the U.S. political right (the Patriot and armed militia movement, the Christian Right, the libertarian right, the extreme right) that Clinton was attempting to create a fascistic and totalitarian New World Order:

"For those in this right-wing conspiracist subculture, Clinton as President represents a constitutional crisis because he is seen as a traitor betraying the country to secret elites plotting a collectivist totalitarian rule through a global New World Order. Stories of Clinton's alleged sexual misconduct buttress this notion because they demonstrate symptoms of his liberal secular humanist outlook, which ties him to what is seen as a longstanding conspiracy against God, individual responsibility, and national sovereignty."

From the Left

Some on the political left see fascism in authoritarian policies of various, but not all, Republican administrations based on their Church and State infuences from the Christian Right, on foreign policy matters from neoconservative thinktanks like PNAC, and the self-interest lobbying from big businesses such as Enron and Halliburton. Some radical (anti-fascist) leftists, notably Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky, refer to both political parties as two sides of the same coin for allowing corporate power and influence to dominate the electoral process, and believe that essentially "free elections" have become defunct in America. Few establishment scholars take these claims seriously.

Noam Chomsky has warned that people in the U.S. need to remain vigilant to keep America from drifting towards fascism.. Some link growing corporate power to fascism..

In several essays, David Neiwert has explored the rise of what he calls "pseudo-fascism." He concedes that "American democracy has not yet reached the genuine stage of crisis required for full-blown fascism to take root" and thus "the current phenomenon cannot properly be labeled 'fascism.'" But he warns:

But what is so deeply disturbing about the current state of the conservative movement is that it has otherwise plainly adopted not only many of the cosmetic traits of fascism, its larger architecture -- derived from its core impulses -- now almost exactly replicates that by which fascists came to power in Italy and Germany in the 1920s and '30s.
It is in this sense that I call it Pseudo Fascism. Unlike the genuine article, it presents itself under a normative, rather than a revolutionary, guise; and rather than openly exulting in violence, it pays lip service to law and order. Moreover, even in the areas where it resembles real fascism, the similarities are often more familial than exact. It is, in essence, less virulent and less violent, and thus more likely to gain broad acceptance within a longtime stable democratic system like that of the United States.
And even in the key areas of difference, it is not difficult to discern that those dissimilarities are gradually shrinking, and in danger of disappearing.
That this is happening should not be a great surprise. After all, as I've already explored in great detail, the mainstream conservative movement has increasingly had contact with the genuine American proto-fascists of the extremist right over the past decade or more, particularly in the trafficking of ideas, agendas and the memes that propel them.

Bush Administration

Noam Chomsky has warned that people in the U.S. need to remain vigilant to keep America from drifting towards fascism.2. Some link growing corporate power to fascism.3.

David Neiwert warns:

what is so deeply disturbing about the current state of the conservative movement is that it has otherwise plainly adopted not only many of the cosmetic traits of fascism, its larger architecture -- derived from its core impulses -- now almost exactly replicates that by which fascists came to power in Italy and Germany in the 1920s and '30s. 4 Following the events of September 11th, 2001, conditions in the United States were ideal for such a project, and significant reforms of the American goverment have followed, including the PATRIOT Act, the complete reversal of progress on a balanced budget, massive military expenditures. These reforms constitute a significant increase in the United States' debt, militarization, belligerence and isolationist nationalism.

Cases made to support the contention that the US is currently Fascist or moving towards fascism include:

  • Use of "administrative warrants" and other tools such as those in the Patriot act which allow the administration to exercise police powers without judicial oversight. The designation of "enemy combatants" by the administration and the use of courts like the Combatant Status Review Tribunal to bypass the normal rule of law. The use of torture. Claims by the administration that it needs more and more of these powers. These may indicate a movement towards a police state.
  • George W. Bush has recently admitted to the fact that he ordered domestic surveillance of US citizens without the authority of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Courts as required by law. His Secretary of State Dr. Condoleezza Rice has stated that the President's authority to take this action is derived from his status as Commander in Chief. However, several members of Congress are considering investigations into this matter, citing that FISA only gives the President authority to use these powers with court approval. (Such approval can be gained within hours from the FISA court, and can also be gained retroactively within 72 hours, which runs counter claims that the process is too slow.) (Domestic Spying Incident)
  • Connected to the FISA matter is the fact that the press (New York Times), held to be independent of government control, nevertheless withheld revealing the information regarding domestic spying from the American public at the request of the Bush Administration. In the ninth paragraph of NYT article written by Risen and Lichtblau they state:

The White House asked The New York Times not to publish this article, arguing that it could jeopardize continuing investigations and alert would-be terrorists that they might be under scrutiny. After meeting with senior administration officials to hear their concerns, the newspaper delayed publication for a year to conduct additional reporting. Some information that administration officials argued could be useful to terrorists has been omitted. (Bush Lets U.S. Spy on Callers Without Courts}

  • Decreasing openness in government: significant increases in the amount of information deemed classified, the introduction of "unclassified but sensitive" information, "sneak and peek" searches and gag orders on search targets (allowed by the Patriot act), etc.
  • Reports such as the Bush Administration paying journalists to promote the policies of the Administration. This lends credence to the allegation that Media is being controlled by the Administration. Also, self-censorship such as the sort practiced in open forums to prevent the spread of viewpoints that oppose the current administration may be considered evidence that the administration need not openly censor, but can rely on supporters to carry out the necessary censorship. (The Armstrong Williams incident)(The Balkans Website incident)
  • The widespread use of religion as a justification for many laws and policies (such as Faith Based Initiatives) and the blocking of certain legislation on religious grounds (such as gay marriage and stem cell research). Also the widespread use of religious rhetoric and symbolism in many speeches and appearances lend credibility to the allegation of religion being intertwined with Government.
  • The "no-fly" list, under which people are prohibited from flying on commercial airplanes: no reasons are ever given for being put on this list, and there is no way to challenge your placement on it; futhermore, the list is kept secret. This list is controlled entirely by the executive branch with no Congressional or judicial oversight. The author of a book critical of Bush ("Bush's Brain") found himself on the list.

Other Critiques

One of the most widely circulated arguments implying the U.S. shares some similarities with fascism is the article by Lawrence Britt.

Britt argues that "fascism’s principles are wafting in the air today, surreptitiously masquerading as something else, challenging everything we stand for." Britt looked at the "following regimes: Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, Franco’s Spain, Salazar’s Portugal, Papadopoulos’s Greece, Pinochet’s Chile, and Suharto’s Indonesia. To be sure, they constitute a mixed bag of national identities, cultures, developmental levels, and history. But they all followed the fascist or protofascist model in obtaining, expanding, and maintaining power. Further, all these regimes have been overthrown, so a more or less complete picture of their basic characteristics and abuses is possible" .

  1. Powerful and continuing expressions of nationalism.
  2. Disdain for the importance of human rights.
  3. Identification of enemies/scapegoats as a unifying cause.
  4. The supremacy of the military/avid militarism.
  5. Rampant sexism.
  6. A controlled mass media.
  7. Obsession with national security.
  8. Religion and ruling elite tied together.
  9. Power of corporations protected.
  10. Power of labour suppressed or eliminated.
  11. Disdain and suppression of intellectuals and the arts.
  12. Obsession with crime and punishment.
  13. Rampant cronyism and corruption.
  14. Fraudulent elections.

Organizations and movements

Organizations that also have been described as 'Neo-Fascist,' with varying degrees of justification, include the following.

See also

Academic surveys

  • The Beast Reawakens by Martin A. Lee, (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 1997, ISBN 0316519596)
  • Fascism (Oxford Readers) by Roger Griffin (1995, ISBN 0192892495
  • Fascism in Britain: A History, 1918-1985 by Richard C. Thurlow (Olympic Marketing Corp, 1987, ISBN 0631136185)
  • Fascism Today: A World Survey by Angelo Del Boca (Pantheon Books, 1st American edition, 1969)
  • Free to Hate: The Rise of the Right in Post-Communist Eastern Europe by Paul Hockenos (Routledge; Reprint edition, 1994, ISBN 0415910587)
  • The Dark Side of Europe: The Extreme Right Today by Geoff Harris, (Edinburgh University Press; New edition, 1994, ISBN 0748604669)
  • The Far Right in Western and Eastern Europe by Luciano Cheles, Ronnie Ferguson, and Michalina Vaughan (Longman Publishing Group; 2nd edition, 1995, ISBN 0582238811)
  • The Radical Right in Western Europe: A Comparative Analysis by Herbert Kitschelt (University of Michigan Press; Reprint edition, 1997, ISBN 0472084410)
  • Shadows Over Europe: The Development and Impact of the Extreme Right in Western Europe edited by Martin Schain, Aristide Zolberg, and Patrick Hossay (Palgrave Macmillan; 1st edition, 2002, ISBN 0312295936)

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