We are all going to die.
That is a fact, not an opinion. You, me, our loved ones, family and friends, our pets, all of us will go under the hill or up in smoke. Yet most of us don't seem to understand or appreciate this obvious fact. If we did, I think we would be a whole lot kinder and forgiving to one another, ourselves and our homeworld. I think if we truly realized the fragility, brevity, and exquisite beauty of our existence-- being alive, being human --we'd behave better. People who have survived a near-death experience or feared for their life, often become kinder, more compassionate and generous. Their sense of being is transformed in remarkable ways, according to their own accounts. Although the genre is anecdotal, there is agreement that life itself, breath by breath, is a treasure beyond value.
Considering that we share the same fate and have nowhere else to live but this tiny spinning rock --for the foreseeable future, another fact-- doesn't it make sense for us to cooperate to co-create and nurture environments and networks that sustain our homeworld and us, too?
Considering we share the same fate and the same homeworld, how does it make sense to allow one species to destroy the environments and networks that sustain us all? I'm making an effort to be temperate, but the urgency of the moment tends to inflame my rhetoric. A growing number of us are convinced that human activity has tipped the balance of the biosphere in lethal ways. Those dangerous and destructive practices must stop and we must begin to remedy and restore what survives. Unfortunately, many of the "decision-makers" and "world leaders" remain firmly committed to the status quo, despite their treaties and agreements to mitigate greenhouse-gas damage.
People around the world are organizing in opposition to the continuing pillage and pollution of global capitalism. In response, the state tends to protect the property and interests of the business class, at the expense of the people and the environment. The ascendancy of private property over the commonwealth has been underway for several centuries, culminating in various forms of state capitalism and capitalist control of the state. The corporatist state is one of the hallmarks of a proto-fascist regime.
Fascism is a form of radical nationalism that first appeared in Europe in the aftermath of WW I. Each of its manifestations exhibited unique characteristics, but all shared certain features in common. Guided by historians and sociologists, one can easily tick off fascism's dominant traits:
a strong leader, a father figure, a dictator, a savior, patriarchy
a police state, a security state, a surveillance state, law & order
scapegoating minorities for social problems, xenophobia
criminalize opposition, eliminate unions, control mass media
promise a return to better times, take back our country
restoration of values, moral purity, protect the homeland
oligarchic control of the economy, corporatist state apparatus
The fascist regimes of Mussolini in Italy, Franco in Spain, and Hitler in Germany, have spawned imitators in other parts of Europe and Latin America, as well as Asia and Africa. It's probably important to distinguish those regimes that come to power by military coup (e.g. Pinochet in Chile, the Shah of Iran) or by installation (e.g. Trujillo, Duvalier) from those that are elected democratically. Call them exo-fascism, "Fascism Imposed", and endo-fascism, "Fascism Invited," respectively.
When I was an undergrad, at UCI in the late sixties, a rash of critical texts appeared almost overnight, like mushrooms. New names joined the contributors to venerable Marxist journals; older, almost forgotten authors were revived. While Charles Reich's The Greening of America was a best-seller, Wilhelm Reich's The Mass-Psychology of Fascism was reprinted. It sold poorly and was mostly ignored, but I found the book enlightening. W. Reich's clinical work with working-class men and women revealed a constellation of neuroses in which he recognized a pattern, as identified by the title of the text. His patients complained about their work, their private lives, their dissatisfaction with life in general. He observed their anger, their insecurity, their fear and their persistent use of force and violence. Reich described the alienated personality prepared to embrace fascist leadership. The people who felt most betrayed and disappointed in their aspirations were the most eager to blame others.
Over the years myriad volumes have been published on every angle and aspect of the social psychology, social economy and social dynamics of our civilization. How are we to understand something as narrow and complex as "late XX Century fascism" within such a huge context? And, if our understanding is correct, can we learn anything useful to forestall, diffuse or defeat fascism when it appears? Although the tone of this essay may seem academic, the matter at hand is immediate and serious. A growing number of citizens fear for the fate of the republic as a democracy, but even more, we fear for the survival of our grandchildren in the decades to come. The rapid shifts occurring at every level of government in the United States indicate movement toward a surveillance state, corporate control of government services, limits on civil liberties & the press, restricted immigration, reduced access to health care, employment, housing, education and justice. It's clear to me where this is headed and I don't think we want to go there.
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