by Jack D. Douglas
May 4, 2013
from
LewRockwell Website
Spanish version
Jack D. Douglas is a retired
professor of sociology from the University of California at San
Diego. He has published widely on all major aspects of human beings,
most notably The Myth of the Welfare State. |
My fascistograph index would rank the following as the vital, core
factors and roots of fascism in a society, from the most important powers at
the top down.
-
A hardcore, totalitarian party
masquerading as the people's party, but secretly working totally
with the rich and powerful corporations, uniting them under the
party. [Fascism, unlike communism and other forms of socialism and
so on, is above all a corporatist form of totalitarianism.]
-
Stroking mass vanity with big lies -
"Germany over all," "America is the greatest nation in the world."
And mass greed and lust for power with utopian promises of free
money and endless prosperity and great conquests over nature and
nations
-
Infiltration secretly by the party of
all major institutions at the top by secret take-overs, threats,
bribes, co-optation, etc.
-
Secret media content control in many
ways by the ruler[s]
-
Imperial powers, party powers, the ruler
principle
-
Massive, powerful secret police under
direct control of the ruler[s], spying, black ops,
-
Secretly taking over the traditional
laws and institutions, hollowing them out and refilling the empty
forms with fascist ideology
-
Filling the government secretly with
party hacks and puppets from top to bottom
-
Politically correct education and
mass-mind training from early age [pre-school onward]
-
Foreigners, racial or religious or party
groups or others used as "evil and secret witches" to stoke terror
and blood lust for wars, used as threats and as conquests to fuel
vanity and hubris. [Germany and the U.S.. Used the "communists" as
witches to inspire terror and hate and blood lust in their early
rise to power, then used religious-race groups, foreign enemies,
drug fiends destroying the nation, etc.]
Fascist regimes follow this general index of core factors.
But they differ widely in specific, public
details. Germany was very different in public from Italy, Mexico, etc. But
their core was roughly the same, though the rose to power in somewhat
different ways, ranking the index factors somewhat differently.
Note that factors often mistakenly seen as core factors of fascism, such as
"racism," are common but not really core factors. The rulers use racism when
it is useful and shun it when it is not. Hitler and the U.S. used racism
blatantly in later years.
Hitler had screamed against the Jews in
Mein Kampf, but most people did not take it
too seriously until later.
The U.S. fascist system grew by incorporating
poor blacks and browns, raging against the "commie witches" and "drug
fiends" and "Russian witches" and "Chinese witches" and "Iraqi witches" and
on and on, but recently has become virulently anti-Islam, treating that as a
"racial taint," though technically it is religious, not racial.
Needless to say, there has been vast historical and political argument about
what the real fascism is.
Much of this has been ideological. The
historical truth is clearly that there are different forms of monarchy,
democracy, fascism, communism and so on. There are common, core factors in
such categories when used correctly, empirically [historically], but there
are always important variations.
The U.S. fascism system pretends to be
drastically different from German and Italian fascism, but is a
corporatist, totalitarian, party system masquerading as
the "welfare state" for all the people and so on down the index.
The U.S. Is much more like Italian, Mussolini,
fascism than like Hitler's ruler-dominated party.
I have thought endlessly about this core issue for most of my adult life,
but I do not pretend to be a ruler dictating such things. There are good
arguments for different rankings of the core index factors, certainly
because there have been real historical differences in fascist systems, like
in democracy systems.
I have used the Nazi, Italian, and U.S. fascist
systems as my main historical examples for constructing this core index and
have used the U.S. as the most important fascist system, since it is the one
that threatens all of mankind today.
America is mankind's existential threat - a doomsday threat with immense,
world shattering arsenals of weapons of mass destruction of every kind, from
thermonuclear weapons to utopian financial central planning of money.