Yes, it is indeed similar to fascism.
Since my April 2 column
that compared Barack Obama's economic policies (and others) to
those of Italy's Benito Mussolini, I have been denounced on the
pages of the Economist, the San Francisco
Chronicle, the Toronto Star, and the New York
Times (less strongly denounced there than in the others,
oddly enough), and by Chris Matthews (and guests Tony Blankley
and Larry Sabato) on Hardball, and also had the idea
made fun of by CNN morning hosts while they played a rather tame
and sober interview they had done with me on the subject.
Never mind that in the New York Times on April 7 , David
Leonhardt went
farther, comparing the policies to the economics of Hitler in
the course of saying that was a good thing because Hitler's
economics worked. Somehow, the rather fact-based piece I wrote
was seen by the media elite as out of bounds, but Leonhardt's was
acceptable analysis because it was meant to praise Obama rather
than bury him.
Yet Leonhardt's column is proof enough that it is not some
right-wing conspiracy theory that sees fascistic leanings in the
big government, corporatist approaches taken by The One in the
Oval Office.
Since then, the evidence has grown only stronger. As the
Examiner
noted yesterday, the Obama takeover of General Motors is
astonishing in its scope and reach. The money quote from GM
itself: "The U.S. Treasury will be able to elect all of our
directors and to control the vote on substantially all matters
brought for a stockholder vote."
This is scary stuff. It is not just a diminution of freedom, but
a frontal assault. And it's only part of the story, the whole of
which is even worse. We now have the government refusing to
accept repayment of loans it made to various banks -- preferring
to keep control of the banks to regaining the taxpayers' money
quickly. Moving from economics to coercion and the use of the
state to target political enemies, we have a Homeland Security
Department targeting veterans and anti-abortionists as potential
terrorists, and a White House leaving open the option of
prosecuting its predecessors over honest policy choices made in a
time of war and without identifying any specific domestic law
supposedly broken. We see selective release of
previously classified information for political purposes. We
have the advancement of "hate crimes" legislation that makes it a
prosecutable offense to think unapproved thoughts. (House
Republican Leader John Boehner was right to say the bill makes
him "want to throw up.")
On the domestic level, again I say, all of this is straight out
of the Mussolini playbook.
But again, to make this clear for those too dim to understand it
the first time, let it be said that to compare policies to those
of Mussolini is not to engage in radical name-calling or
comparison to Hitler. Mussolini was bad, indeed awful -- an
authoritarian thug and bully, along the same lines as dozens of
other authoritarian thugs and bullies through the years. The
comparison definitely ought to scare those who love freedom --
but no more than a comparison to, say, Fulgencio Batista in Cuba.
Authoritarianism is not totalitarianism, though. There is a big
difference -- a difference educated people once understood. We
are not talking about pure evil, not talking about genocide, not
talking about brutal attempts at foreign conquest, not talking
about Mengele-like experiments and deliberate killing of
"defectives." What we are talking about is the beginning of a
tendency toward authoritarianism (so far minus the thuggishness),
especially in the economic realm. And we darn well ought to be
able to make sober, factual, valid historical analogies, by way
of warning -- much as Leonhardt did, in his rather twisted
attempt at praise of Obama -- without being accused of foaming at
the mouth.
It is especially appropriate to make such comparisons if one has
already shown that it is not merely a partisan accusation. Some
of us noted even
when Bush started us on this path that it had similarities to
fascist economics. And I take a back seat to nobody in having
fought against real neo-Nazism on the right, as a founding board
member of the Louisiana Coalition Against Racism and Nazism
(which carried the fight against David Duke).
Again, this is a question of freedom. It's a question of free
enterprise, free markets, and free minds. When an administration
takes over banks and car companies, and makes moves to force
through a takeover of the entire
health care industry without the ordinary
procedural safeguards, and (even under Bush) forces banks to
buy other banks against
their will, then this isn't the America we know and love.
This is instead a country ruled by a top-down,
command-and-control, invasive, barely accountable, self-selected
elite.
And that is dangerous. And, minus the antipathy to labor unions,
that is the very definition of Italian economic
fascism. And if Chris Matthews would put me on his show to
have a civil discussion about it, his viewers would find it a
reasonable and edifying conversation -- with not a single bit of
what Matthews described as "red hot language."
Meanwhile, I hope Speaker Nancy Pelosi, President Obama and
Attorney General Eric Holder don't charge me with a "hate crime"
for using the word fascist with regard to their policies.
topics:
Fascism
