There are two interesting pieces on this subject that have surfaced of late. One of them is an early theorem from the Usenet called Godwin's law, which in various forms, describes the mechanism of calling on Nazism or Fascism as an analogy for current events:

Godwin's Law is a natural law of Usenet named after Mike Godwin (godwin@eff.org) concerning Usenet "discussions". It reads, according to the Jargon File:

As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.

See http://www.killfile.org/~tskirvin/faqs/godwin.html

The second, more serious analysis comes from a history teacher in Cape Cod and I am attaching it since there is no website on which it is posted. It is long but intelligent and worth thinking about:

The author teaches history and sociology at Cape Cod Academy, a mid-cape private high school. He writes a column for the Cape Cod Times editorial page. It appears on Fridays.

The future of Freedom in America

I'm not sure exactly when it was that someone sent me my first reprint of an article comparing George Bush to Hitler. It bothered me a lot, not because I'm a Republican but because it simply wasn't a fair attack. Read Mein Kampf for yourself, then ask if you think George Bush is the next Hitler. Had Bill Clinton the wit to get Bush named Commissioner of Baseball soon enough, the man would never have entered politics - and wouldn't have wanted to. No. George Bush is no Hitler, and the Left does him a slander to suggest it, and squanders its credibility by doing so.

Having said all that, another question remains - one worth asking: How safe is America from Fascism today? It took a world war, a fortune in American blood and treasure and 70 million lives around the world to wrestle fascism to the ground last time. It is to honor our fathers and grandfathers - and the world's teeming dead - that we take a look around and inquire about the future of freedom in America.

A patriot should worry about fascism like a religious devotee worries about sin, because both have to be confronted every day. Both arise from perennial temptations. What is fascism? Fascism is what happens when concentrations of wealth and power join forces to consolidate their advantages and advance their interests. "Modern fascism should properly be called 'corporatism', since it is a merger of the state, military and corporate power." said Benito Mussolini, Italy's tyrant in WW2.

There may be neo-Nazis in America today, but they're not really going anywhere because they're still in love with German fascism, its heroes and symbols. We have to consider something different. We have to watch for things as American as apple pie - things that won't feel foreign at all.

Mussolini spoke of a "merger". This concept is the key to understanding fascism. Fascism is an unholy alliance of potentially good things: our government in Washington, the people we send there and those they appoint-the media who can reach us everywhere - in our cars, living rooms, online - our most successful corporations and the powerful men who run them - our military and the police and our dominant religions. Those are the main ingredients - and taken one by one, they are good things. They are ours, and we're proud of them.

But what happens when they begin to cooperate - not in meeting the needs of the American people - but in consolidating their own advantages? Is it not the proper business of enterprises to succeed and do they not see their growing success as a good thing? Indeed they do - and therein lies the temptation.

Fortunately, we have lots of history to look at now. The German people elected Hitler, for example. The Serbs loved Milosovitch, the Italians loved Mussolini. But for all the patriotic rhetoric, did their champions love them back? No. Their leaders were elitist snobs, convinced they could hoodwink their people into surrendering their liberties one by one. We have the advantage of historical hindsight; we have their papers and communications. They wrote the book on conquering their own nations from within. It should be required reading in every school.

What I'd like to do is review with you what we know about fascism and then you can decide whether it's anything patriotic Americans should be worried about. We've made a start: we've identified the key players. They are the ones who always stand to benefit the most from fascism, however much of it they can get. And, however difficult this might be in an election year, let's proceed in the understanding that both our political parties face the same temptations here. Founding father James Madison gave us fair warning: "I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by sudden and violent usurpations." More to come on this next time.

Recognizing a matrix of temptations

There is a risk that we might keep our eyes trained on the horizon for some foreign enemy while we are quietly looted and disenfranchised from within. This is what Ben Franklin had in mind as he left a session of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. A woman approached him on the street. "So, do we have a king?" she asked. "No madam," Franklin said. "You have a republic - if you can keep it."

Fascism arises out of a matrix of temptations. The corporation may wish to maximize profits by reducing workers' wages and benefits. At some point, they run afoul of worker-protection laws and must secure the cooperation of elected officials to remove the obstacles to further profits. They offer campaign contributions and other amenities to those politicians most responsive to their needs.

Needless to say, the newspapers and other media could raise the alarm. That problem is best solved by purchasing as many of them as possible and gradually weaning them (and the public) away from investigative reporting. Short attention-spans get even shorter.

What if striking workers need a little physical instruction from police batons and, in extremis, army bayonets? These things have been arranged in America's past. Later on, as modern history reminds us, inconvenient intellectuals can be silenced -along with uncooperative media - until eventually we have more enforcement than law.

History even illustrates how religious institutions can be tempted with the chance to see their values made compulsory by the silencing of rival sects and faiths or in harsher conditions, protection in return for silence. "In short, we want to burn out the poison of immorality which has entered our whole life and culture as a result of liberal excess." Adolf Hitler. How ironic: Hitler offers to improve the morals of his countrymen and defend them from the evil of liberal impulses.

You don't attack fascism by attacking or demonizing any of its constituent parts. This is what the Left hasn't understood. Corporations are not villainous things, nor are cops on the beat or our own kinsmen who make up the military. Our churches are clear forces for good. But all institutions are subject to the temptations to advance their wealth and influence at the expense of ordinary people, even while declaring themselves to be the people's protector and friend. We've seen it all before, both here and abroad.

So this is a good time to offer our first weapon against fascism. We vigilantly protect the political and economic interests of ordinary people against encroachment by any of the concentrated power interests we've been talking about. With every policy question that comes up, we ask, "Will this new suggestion put more money in the workers' pockets - or less? Will Americans be more free - or less so? Is our government more secret, or more open?" Then we vote.

Why, after all, did we go to war against Hitler and Mussolini and Tojo? Why did we hold the line against the Soviet Union all those years but to protect our liberty and the chance ordinary people have here for a decent life. That being the case, we have to ask how a free and prosperous people can be tricked into surrendering their freedom and prosperity to fascists. How that happens is next.

Extracting the freedom from a free people

There is a science to this. The assault on the freedom of free people is as old as freedom itself. We see it in ancient Athens and Rome, but the most instructive lessons come after the Industrial Revolution and the creation of the mass media. The clearest lessons are offered by Hitler's rise to power, overthrowing the existing democracy in Germany.

How shall a free people be persuaded to yield their freedoms up to a central government? In America, this should be a non-partisan (or a multi-partisan) question. Nobody owns this.

First, you need an emergency. You can always make one up, but usually there's something scary going on you can point to. Top Nazi Hermann Goering put it this way: "It is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship,. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country."

So you need a climate of fear. Put a steady diet of fear into a man and soon a steady stream of anger comes out the other end. Fascism loves anger, encourages it as a form of civic righteousness, then uses its political steam to do the new work of the state. We can recognize fear and anger as spiritual toxins. Fascism depends on those. Citizens are encouraged to think of themselves as victims whose desperate plight excuses them from moral restraints.

The fascist enthusiasm for manly action prefers polarization to reconciliation, war-making to peace-making. This preference wins fascism the allegiance of defense contractors and many in the military, especially \the senior officer corps. Those who don't go along are replaced with new, enthusiastic recruits.

Fascism distrusts intellectuals not already on board, and seeks to crush dissent from any defenders of civil rights and freedom. So fascism makes war on ambiguity. Problems are distilled to childlike simplicity; all questions are reduced to yes or no. Fascism glorifies decisive action and the masculine. "Whenever anyone says the word "culture," said propaganda genius Goebbels, "it makes me want to reach for my pistol."

Fascism identifies with a fixed set of national symbols and narrowly defines what it means to be a true member of the country. Those who can't or won't conform, either for reasons of faith or conscience or intellectual scruples, are denounced as unpatriotic and enemies of the state. In the name of country, citizens are encouraged to despise their fellow countrymen if they fail to conform.

Ironically, the interests of God and faith can be invoked in the midst of the most immoral projects. We saw this in the medieval inquisitions. The faithful were threatened with hidden evils only a trained elite could detect and save them from. As always, extreme measures were called for. They always are.

Fascist leaders will appear blasé and arrogant. Their usurpation of civil liberties must be justified by their superior knowledge and foresight. Here's where a subservient media is vital, so inconsistencies and mistakes can't be pointed out in public. When cornered, national security can always be cited, as Goering suggested over a half-century ago.

If we have a color-coded system of national alert for terrorism, we should have one for fascism too. Watch for the signs; then vote against anyone whose behavior suggests fascism to you. Such patriotic vigilance transcends political party concerns. I know lots of people in both parties. None of them want fascism for America. Love of country is a good thing, but it has to translate - as love always must - into actual benefit for the beloved. Democracy is safest when economic and political power is not concentrated in too few hands. Such concentration cannot be justified as a defense of democracy. It is, in fact, democracy's executioner.

The character of freedom

We are Americans who love our country. We love our freedom. We love the land we live in and we're grateful for the quality of life it gives us. We also know that freedom always has its enemies. In today's world, those enemies come at us from two main fronts: they are religious extremists bent on terrorizing us into conversion or they are powerful persons intent on tightening their grip on wealth - and their advantage over those whose work produces it.

If we do what citizens in a democracy are expected to do, faced with a threat, we'll ask ourselves what we need to do to counter the threats that face us. At the moment, I'm not talking about the things somebody else is supposed to do to protect us. I'm talking about what we ourselves can do. (I can feel Jefferson clearing his throat impatiently behind me.) We must perfect ourselves as best we can as citizens. We must embody - each one of us - the character of freedom.

How, you ask, can traits of character - any character - detect a nuclear device being smuggled into Detroit? Obviously, it can't. We have the FBI for that. What possessing the character of freedom will do is equip us to respond appropriately to whatever happens to us next that whatever casualties our enemies inflict on us, our liberty itself will not be among the missing. So what would a democratic character look like? It would be the character of fascism turned inside out.

If fascism stokes fear and anger, democracy responds with courage and forbearance. We have people shouting at us and telling us every day why we deserve to be angry and who we're supposed to be angry at. If we're going to think straight, we need to calm down. Keeping a clear head under pressure is the stuff of heroism. The democratic character expects every human being to be capable of self-transcendence when it counts.

If fascism promotes a punitive intolerance of non-conformity, freedom asks for proof of injury before judging others. A free society can be defined as diversity thriving in an atmosphere of tolerance. We have our civil law to regulate our public lives, and the democratic character demands the law be applied equally to all. About religion and other private matters, democracy requires a respectful silence and a respect of others' privacy.

If fascism distrusts the life of the mind and champions violent action instead, democracy requires critical intelligence from all its citizens - and an understanding of history. At the opening of our history, John Adams reminded us, "Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people." In a democracy, the construction of a library is a patriotic act.

If fascism glorifies war and its war leaders, democracy calls its citizens to it with extreme reluctance. The democratic character knows that the best way to support our troops is not to send them into danger unnecessarily. When we have no choice, we expect honor and valor from our warriors, but we also recognize the threat any permanently armed force poses to our own freedom. This ambivalence about armed force can be traced right back to the founding fathers.

Most of all, the democratic character continually seeks to expand the fortunes of the common man and woman. There is, in that hope of expansion, an innate distrust of power and privilege. "He mocks the people," said Grover Cleveland, "who proposes that the government shall protect the rich and that they, in turn, will care for the laboring poor."

Any charlatan can burst into tears at an unfurled flag. American fascism, if it ever comes, will be as American as half-time at the Super Bowl. So it won't be on their expressions of patriotism that we should choose our leaders but for their protection of liberty and the lack of secrecy with which they do the public's business.

At the beginning of our history, the founding fathers had to justify, in an age of autocracy, the vesting of ordinary people with political power. To do so, they had to insist that ordinary people can have the wisdom to know what is right and the moral courage to do it. No institution can be better than its members. Nothing has changed. While freedom occasionally requires us to fight for it, we defend it best, and daily, by living in it.


Lawrence Brown, 508-771-5096 Proposed series of columns for the Cape Cod Times

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Regards,

A