Bertram M. Gross - Friendly Fascism: The New Face of Power in America

Friendly Fascism

The New Face of Power in America

Bertram Gross

To My Grandchildren

Contents

Introduction: A Patriotic Warning

This is a book about Democracy.

It is a book of realism, fear, and hope.

It is about great achievements and tragic failures in America; about maneuverings that could turn the democracy we now know into a new form of despotism. Above all, it is about a more true democracy.

As I look toward the future, I see the possibility in America for a more genuine democracy than has ever existed. Economically, socially, culturally, and politically the people of that America would be able to take partmore directly than ever beforein decisions affecting themselves and others and our nations role in the world. The country would operate in the best sense of a national honeycomb of interrelating groups and individuals. On all sides, I see the potentials for that America. The spirits of great events, in Johannon von Schillers words, stride on before the event/ And in today already walks tomorrow. That kind of future, more than material possessions, has always been the vital center of the American dream.

Looking at the present, I see a more probable future: a new despotism creeping slowly across America. Faceless oligarchs sit at command posts of a corporate-government complex that has been slowly evolving over many decades. In efforts to enlarge their own powers and privileges, they are willing to have others suffer the intended or unintended consequences of their institutional or personal greed. For Americans, these consequences include chronic inflation, recurring recession, open and hidden unemployment, the poisoning of air, water, soil and bodies, and, more important, the subversion of our constitution. More broadly, consequences include widespread intervention in international politics through economic manipulation, covert action, or military invasion. On a world scale, all of this is already producing a heating up of the cold war and enlarged stockpiles of nuclear and non-nuclear death machines.

I see at present members of the Establishment or people on its fringes who, in the name of Americanism, betray the interests of most Americans by fomenting militarism, applauding rat-race individualism, protecting undeserved privilege, or stirring up nationalistic and ethnic hatreds. I see pretended patriots who desecrate the American flag by waving it while waiving the law.

In this present, many highly intelligent people look with but one eye and see only one part of the emerging Leviathan. From the right, we are warned against the danger of state capitalism or state socialism, in which Big Business is dominated by Big Government. From the left, we hear that the future danger (or present reality) is monopoly capitalism, with finance capitalists dominating the state. I am prepared to offer a cheer and a half for each view; together, they make enough sense for a full three cheers. Big Business and Big Government have been learning how to live in bed together, and despite arguments between them, enjoy the cohabitation. Who may be on top at any particular moment is a minor matterand in any case can be determined only by those with privileged access to a well-positioned keyhole.

I am uneasy with those who still adhere strictly to President Eisenhowers warning in his farewell address against the potential for the disastrous rise of power in the hands of the military-industrial complex. Nearly two decades later, it should be clear to the opponents of militarism that the military-industrial complex does not walk alone. It has many partners: the nuclear-power complex, the technology-science complex, the energy-auto-highway complex, the banking-investment-housing complex, the city-planning-development-land-speculation complex, the agribusiness complex, the communications complex, and the enormous tangle of public bureaucracies and universities whose overt and secret services provide the foregoing with financial sustenance and a nurturing environment. Equally important, the emerging Big Business-Big Government partnership has a global reach. It is rooted in colossal transnational corporations and complexes that help knit together a Free World on which the sun never sets. These are elements of the new despotism.

A few years ago a fine political scientist, Kenneth Dolbeare, conducted a series of in-depth interviews totalling twenty to twenty-five hours per person. He found that most respondents were deeply afraid of some future despotism. The most striking thing about inquiring into expectations for the future, he reported, is the rapidity with which the concept of fascism (with or without the label) enters the conversation. But not all knowledge serves the cause of freedom. In this case the tendency is to suppress fears of the future, just as most people have learned to repress fears of a nuclear holocaust. It is easier to repress well-justified fears than to control the dangers giving rise to them. Thus Dolbeare found an air-raid shelter mentality, in which people go underground rather than deal directly with threatening prospects.

Fear by itself, as Alan Wolfe has warned, could help immobilize people and nurture the apathy which is already too large in American society. But repression of fear can do the same thingand repression of fear is a reality in America.

As I look at America today, I am not afraid to say that I am afraid.

I am afraid of those who proclaim that it cant happen here. In 1935 Sinclair Lewis wrote a popular novel in which a racist, anti-Semitic, flag-waving, army-backed demagogue wins the 1936 presidential election and proceeds to establish an Americanized version of Nazi Germany. The title, It Cant Happen Here, was a tongue-in-cheek warning that it might. But the it Lewis referred to is unlikely to happen again any place. Even in todays Germany, Italy or Japan, a modern-style corporate state or society would be far different from the old regimes of Hitler, Mussolini, and the Japanese oligarchs. Anyone looking for black shirts, mass parties, or men on horseback will miss the telltale clues of creeping fascism. In any First World country of advanced capitalism, the new fascism will be colored by national and cultural heritage, ethnic and religious composition, formal political structure, and geopolitical environment. The Japanese or German versions would be quite different from the Italian varietyand still more different from the British, French, Belgian, Dutch, Australian, Canadian, or Israeli versions. In America, it would be supermodern and multi-ethnicas American as Madison Avenue, executive luncheons, credit cards, and apple pie. It would be fascism with a smile. As a warning against its cosmetic facade, subtle manipulation, and velvet gloves, I call it friendly fascism. What scares me most is its subtle appeal.

I am worried by those who fail to rememberor have never learnedthat Big Business-Big Government partnerships, backed up by other elements, were the central facts behind the power structures of old fascism in the days of Mussolini, Hitler, and the Japanese empire builders.

I am worried by those who quibble about labels. Some of my friends seem transfixed by the idea that if it is fascism, it must appear in the classic, unfriendly form of their youth. Why, oh why, they retrospectively moan, didnt people see what was happening during the 1920s and the 1930s? But in their own blindness they are willing to use the terms invented by the fascist ideologists, corporate state or corporatism, but not fascism.