Race, Racism and the Law in America

HERE IS SOMETHING I FIRST POSTED FIVE MONTHS AGO. I AM RE-POSTING IT THIS END OF SEPTEMBER FOR NO PARTICULAR REASON. I JUST LIKE IT.

Rush Limbaugh called the President’s appointee for Supreme Court Justice a “reverse racist.” He is wrong; she is simply a racist. If you discriminate against anyone because he belongs to a racial group (whatever that means, see below), you are a racist. There is no definitional exception depending on the race of the discriminator. Got it?

Judge Sotomayor is an overt racist. Read the papers and think about the decisions she made on affirmative action and the reasons she gave. She is also on record as stating that she would “hope that a wise Latina woman, with the richness of her experience, would more often than not reach a better decision than….” (quoted from WSJ editorial of 5/27/09). Hemming and hawing aside, that is a straightforward declaration of the judicial superiority of having been born a member of a particular group. The qualifier “wise” does not count. Of course, she is not stupid and she would not say that an unwise Latina has superior judgment.

That declaration was published in something called “La Raza Law Journal.” Yes, you guessed right, “raza” means “race” in Spanish. It’s a law school publication for Latinos, “our race.” Academic ideologues will try to tell you with a straight face that “raza” does not really mean “race.” Just ask them how to say “race,” in Spanish then and watch them stutter and possibly cry.

Mrs Sotomayor is also a bad judge whose decisions are overturned 60 % of the time. No matter, she will be confirmed because she has been paying her taxes, unlike other Obama appointees.

That Sotomayor is a woman is going to please women who think only occasionally, because it feels right. There is no reason in the world to believe that female judges render decisions that are different from those of male judges. You can’t have it both ways, girl! Women don’t have different brains or they do; it’s one or the other. Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said it best: “Those who think the world would be better if it were run by women just don’t remember high-school.” I wouldn’t be surprised though if Justice Sotomayor’s robe turned out neater than the robes of the male Justices.

Race is a puzzling topic under American law. Conservatives have been silent too long about the intellectual incoherence of our Federal Government’s racial policies.

Racial thinking in America begun with definitions used to narrow down the judicial idea of who was a slave. Race then played a part, but a small one. The Federal legal reach on race expanded greatly in the nineteen-sixties for the purpose of defining which kind of person deserved to be compensated for (real) past injustices. At the beginning, it was easy: There was a fairly well defined category of Americans whose ancestors had been brought to this country in chains. Mot of the same also had ancestors who had been kept in chains for several generations. Most also had ancestors whom the law failed to protects equally for several more generations. The law was dealing with tangible historical injustices committed against a tangible group of people. Then, quickly, legal matters got conceptually complicated.

Under our political system, any category of people can group together to lobby for anything. Observing the advantages African- Americans were getting through affirmative action as a result of these legal definitions, other members of other categories , and potential categories, starting thinking, “Me, too. Give me a piece of that pie.” They lobbied to become legally protected minorities under the law.

The first imitators were “Hispanics” or “Latinos,” no one knows exactly what the politically correct designation is, not even the Federal Government. Their success in achieving protected status is doubly perplexing. First, the category of reference was created purely for the purpose of lobbying. It did not and does not exist in Nature. Having ancestors born in a country where the main language is Spanish creates limited linguistic and cultural commonalities, that’s all. If you told a Cuban-American former heart surgeon (in Cuba) that he was in some way related to a poor, illiterate, illegal immigrant from a rural area of Mexico, he would be perplexed. There is no commonality of condition between these two men although they use the same word to say, “horse,” for example.

Even this minimal linguistic definition does not hold for most Latinos (or “Hispanics”). Like all other immigrant groups, people from Spanish-speaking countries normally lose the language of origin by the third generation, more rarely, by the fourth generation. Thus, most American Latinos probably do not know the language that defines them, for some legal purposes. The logic of this is as if here were special duties imposed on blonds that applied also to their dark-haired and red-headed grandchildren!

Since obtaining a protected status from the Federal Government is mostly a matter of successful lobbying, there is no objective limit to who or what a protected category will include. So, for some purposes, Spaniards, people born in Spain, enjoy the same protected status as other “Latinos.” But, wait a minute, Spaniards are citizens of the greatest oppressor nation in the history of the world, members of the society that enslaved more millions than anyone else, for four hundred years! (Spanish colonial slavery started early and ended late.) Those people enjoy protected legal status here because of something Americans did to the same people they, the Spaniards oppressed so successfully. Read this again. I know it’s complicated; not my fault, I did not make this up. Here it is again:

Spaniards oppressed Mexicans. Americans oppressed Mexicans. Therefore, Americans owe Spaniards!

Even more puzzling is the fact that, for practical purposes, almost all Latinos (“Hispanics”) currently living in the US are immigrants or the descendants of immigrants. (Not all, I know; see below.) So, if I understand well the compensatory logic of federal law regarding protected categories: People come here from another country, of their own accord, and they get mistreated. They keep coming nevertheless, generation after generation. They keep being mistreated. So, other Americans whose ancestors came from other countries, such as Sweden, or Italy, or India, or Iraq, owe them special consideration. This debt is even embedded in federal law.

Note that there is no more convincing proof of the voluntary nature of any action than having to incur considerable risk to undertake it. The greater the risks, the higher the degree of voluntariness. The current flood of illegal Mexican immigrants, forced to risk death crossing deserts, pillaged, robbed, raped and beaten by human smugglers, living if they succeed under precarious conditions in this country, underscores the fact that such immigrants are not similar to the African-Americans whose ancestors were brought here by force. In fact, they are exactly the converse of African-Americans.

Here is another way to put it: If your ancestors made the wrong choice by coming to this country (uninvited, even if legally), don’t ask me for compensation. I had nothing to do with it, nor did the Republic that articulates my will, for better or for worse. And, by the way, your ancestors probably did not in fact make the wrong choice. Find your cousins in the old country and see how they are living right now.

The point I am making is that voluntary immigrants and their descendants have no moral claim on this society and that they merit no special judicial treatment irrespective of how unfairly they are treated. Here is the common-sense principle that applies here:

If you crash the party, even if you crash it only in the sense that the host did not care whether you came in or not, you may not complain about your seating. You may also not allow others, greedy or vainglorious lawyers for example, to make claims on your behalf based on what a bad table you ended up sitting at.

By the way, for those of you who don’t know, I am an immigrant. So is my wife and so are our two children.

Also by the way, I like Mexicans and I don’t think illegal Mexican immigrants should be deported. I consider other radical options in an article forthcoming soon in The Independent Review (co-authored with Sergey Nikoforov, another immigrant).

Historical note: I am well aware of the fact that there was a Mexican, Spanish-speaking population there when the US stole half of Mexico in the 19^th century. Those people’s descendants are not immigrants at all. They just stayed home. By my count, assuming a rate of reproduction normal for their place and time, if the only Latinos in the US today were the descendants of those people, the total Latino population would be about one tenth what it is.

Other protected groups except one received their special treatment the same way as Latinos, by arguing successfully that they were especially ill-treated, sometimes in the past. The reasoning invoked always ends up absurd. Thus, Chinese-Americans and Japanese-Americans received their special protection because their ancestors were undoubtedly discriminated against in the 19^th century, including with respect to admission to the US. My reaction is: So, double what? First, they were all volunteers. (See above.) Second, the US did not owe then, and does not owed now, an equal right to be admitted to all kinds of people regardless of their provenance and of the cultural baggage they carry. Right now, there are countries whose citizens I would accept only with an eye-drop because I think they present a serious danger to the values I love as an American. (What countries is a topic for another posting. I am trying to avoid distraction here.)

The judicial protection extended to descendants of Chinese and of Japanese was gradually extended to some other Asians but not to all Asians. Thus, people of Filipino origin, and of Korean origin, and of Vietnamese origin all share in this special status. Asians from the Indian subcontinent, Iranians, Turks, and Arabs do not. If you ask yourself why the ones but not the others, the obvious answer is that Koreans and Vietnamese and, with a stretch, Filipinos, all look like Chinese and Japanese to the untutored Western eye. If this classification does not proceed from a racist mentality, nothing does!

The Federal Government is racist at the behest of liberal opinion!

Or maybe, it’s a matter of how much rice they each eat. It would make as much sense as the current system of classification.

One federally protected category did not obtain its special status through lobbying and absolutely deserves it. I am referring to the congeries of groups and their descendants known as “Native Americans,” American Indians. Today’s Indians are descendants of people who were lied to, killed, imprisoned, deliberately deprived of their cultures, and who had their treaties violated by the United States of America. There is no doubt in my mind that they merit reparation at the hands of the same United States because they were actively prevented from enjoying the rewards of our society repeatedly, and from day one. A special, protective legal status is very small compensation for what was done to them by our polity acting in its official capacity, this very same United States of ours.

Incidentally, I am also in favor of reparation for the descendants of African slaves but I am too tired to write about it today.

I could not resist the temptation of delivering myself of a lecture on race on the occasion of Judge Sotomayor’s nomination. In fact, Judge Sotomayor’s racism is largely a red herring, I think. It distracts us from the main fact about her: She is a bad jurist and she is on record stating that the courts make policy. These two facts together turn her into an asset for our messianic President. He and his entourage are betting that she will do as she is told on the Supreme Court. A Justice intellectually out of her depth is less likely to become independent than one fully at ease on the Bench.

PS A few days ago, I heard the White House Press Secretary warn everyone to refrain from saying anything disparaging about Judge Sotomayor, in line with the monarchical style of the Obama Administration. I have a response:

Mr Press Secretary: I invite you to commit an anatomically challenging lewd act on your own person.

Teacher Sex and President Sentences Terror Suspects to Rape?

WARNING: THERE IS A BAD ARABIC TRANSLATION OF THIS POSTING IN EXISTENCE SOMEWHERE. I  DID  NOT REQUEST IT, I DID NOT AUTHORIZE IT, AND I DID NOT APPROVE IT. I AM ONLY RESPONSIBLE FOR WHAT I WRITE IN ENGLISH, IN FRENCH AND, RARELY, IN SPANISH.

There are days, rare days, when I feel completely French, after more than forty years. One such occasion is whenever anyone criticizes foie gras, its consumption, its presentation, or its production. (Go ahead, Googgle it; it’s all true.)

The other times my French culture of origin soars up within me is when I hear from the media that yet another Florida school teacher is accused of having her way with one of her young male students. It seems to happen mostly in Florida, somehow. Don’t ask me why. It must be the enervating climate. Anyway, there was a such an announcement in the news yesterday.

I am sorry, I can’t quite get my indignation up. In fact, the news brightened my day to an extent. “Double standard,” you say. Sure thing! It’s mostly Mother Nature’s decision. Facts matter: First, boys can’t be raped by women. You can’t repeat it often enough. Second, boys don’t get pregnant. Sorry to give you the obvious but the politically correct media seem to have forgotten it. Third, there is a part of me that is in synch with thousands of years of popular sentiment: I suspect that sex is emotionally more important to females than to males.

The way I see it, the 15-year old victim is probably a horny little beast. (I have a good memory.) Besides, when he is with teacher, he is almost certainly involved in less vapid conversation than anytime he is hanging out with his friends. The fact that his mother knew all about it rejoices me. She says teacher was a “good influence” on the boy. Besides, Mom was in a good position to keep an eye on them to make sure she did not abused her little darling. I think the only abuse the boy suffered was that he could not brag about his deeds to his buddies. That must have hurt but it taught him self-control and abnegation.

Some really dumb, or really hypocritical middle-aged woman asked on television, “What can a woman in her thirties possibly find in a young boy?” So, in case some of you are wondering too ladies, let me give it to you: 1) Inexhaustible energy; 2) Full mental concentration undisturbed by issues of work, mortgage, or car payments; 3) The joys of teaching something useful and pleasant to a very attentive student, for once.

Don’t underestimate the first factor. One of the best guarded secrets is how much women vary in their sexual appetites. Some would rather be knitting on most days. For others a lot of daily nookie is almost a matter of survival.

Speaking of survival. The Pentagon announced recently that 14% of the Guantanamo detainees released went back to violent Jihad. Win some, lose some!

A friend of mine who was raised a Muslim has a different take on closing Guantanamo. He says the detainees in Cuba were getting three square meals a day, each conforming to Muslim dietary laws, prayer meetings led by an imam, superior medical care and, for many of them, soccer. They lived in a hot but sunny climate. (Sun exposure wards off depression to an extent.)

Their very presence in the strange and isolated place that is Guantanamo base made them visible to the whole world, including to lazy journalists.

Transfer them to maximum security prisons in the continental US and their lives will worsen drastically. First, I doubt anyone will be stupid enough to put them all in the same prison. So, they will lose the solace a like-minded group offers. In small numbers administered by callous wardens, their ability to obtain proper Islamic meals will decline drastically. Regular prison health care is notoriously bad. Far from the eyes, far from the mind! (That’s Frenglish.) It’s doubtful anyone in charge will create problems for himself by supplying special health care to detainees not available to common criminals. (Think of the perception of inequity this would cause.) The detainees sports activities will be limited to whatever the local regimen allows. There is worse.

American prisons are dangerous places. You get killed there and you get raped. Convicts have a strange sense of honor served by habits of violence. We already know that child molesters not isolated from the general population are usually murdered in prison. Convicts make it a matter of pride. Many convicts are patriotic, probably more so that are Americans in general, undoubtedly more so than the left-wing of the Democratic Party. Certainly no one can expect racial or religious tolerance from the Aryan Brotherhood whose members sport swastika tattoos. In federal prisons, Guantanamo detainees will become practice targets for shanking. There is worse.

In American high security prisons, if you are young, or in any way exotic, or if you are merely new and unprotected, you get raped, often repeatedly. Does anyone wish to make the bet that vicious American convicts will make an exception for foreign-looking, non-English speaking suspected terrorists?

The Red Cross and the press will not know that this is happening. They will have little access. Prisons authorities are not especially responsive to outside pressure except when confronted by a court order. But a court order usually means that the damage has already been done.

If President Obama is mindless enough, or cynical enough, to transfer any Guantanamo detainees to prisons on US territory, there will finally be grounds for the world to claim that the our country is violating its own Bill of Rights by inflicting cruel and unusual punishment.

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All George W. Bush’s Fault: The Axis of Evil, San Francisco – Iran – North Korea is Thriving

First, let me be clear: The first point of the axis is San Francisco not because of the homosexual demonstrations that went on May 26th raging spite at the court decision. The court decided that the recent California voters’ initiative deciding that marriage is between a man and a woman would stand. Let me repeat that I am in favor of constitutional equal protection, and therefore, in favor of civil union between any two adult human beings. This affords the same civil and practical rights as does marriage presently. I could be convinced about civil union between more than three adults but I think it’s going to have to wait. Right now, I am a little prejudiced against civil union between humans and non-humans, a man and his two Labradors, for example. I wish homosexuals well so long as their militant leadership doesn’t try to subvert our constitutions. But I digress.

San Francisco is the first point in the axis of evil because it’s the home of Nancy Pelosi. She lied repeatedly about what she knew and did not know about interrogations methods used on behalf of terrorists. She thought she could get away with it because she is the Speaker of the House. Rules don’t apply to the high and mighty, she thinks.

Incidentally, I have said insensitive things about my near-neighbor, Leon Panetta, in the past. I stand partly corrected. The Director of the CIA acted like a man on this matter. He stood up for what he knew to be the truth and screw the consequences! I don’t dare hope believe he has a juicy file on Pelosi. Or maybe, the President has decided to throw her under the bus, like his grandmother. Either way, it’s fine with me.

The second point on the axis of evil Iran, is speeding up its nuclear development. The third, North Korea, is both testing nuclear bombs and sending missiles that could carry them into the stratosphere. Of course, no one is really worried except the stupid Israelis because the United Nations is going to put an end decisively to all this thuggish behavior. (OK, I am joking bitterly.)

It’s all former President Bush’s fault because he let himself be talked for several years into inaction by the wimps in his administration. He encouraged the Europeans to “talk” Iran down for six years with the results we know. His own administration directly made de-nuclearizing deals with the North Korean buffoon dictator. That’s the same man who engaged in massive counterfeiting of US dollars and state drug smuggling. It’s the same man who acted decidedly 20 years ago, when his Pappy would not buy him a national movie industry: He had a South Korean film director and a famous actress kidnapped and kept them captive for about five years. Do you think I am making this up?

North Korea violated the agreement with Bush as it violated every other agreement before. This country is not bombing North Korea because the South Koreans say no, so far, and because China is opposed to any serious measure against North Korea. It would be interesting to understand why fairly prosperous China protects this desperate, failed regime. Media commentators say it’s because the Chinese leadership does not want a flood of refugees coming through its border when the North Korean regime collapses. But it’s going to collapse, one way or another so, I don’t get it.

Back to Iran. Between the moment the Europeans admitted they had shit on their face from talking to that country, and the election, Pres. Bush had good opportunities for a tactical attack on the country’s nuclear sites. A second opportunity arose between the election and the inauguration. Pres. Bush had nothing to lose and he could have perfected his mission. Too much the gentleman, I suppose.

The way I see it, the Israelis have little choice. The tinny President of Iran has denied the reality of the WWII genocide and declared that Israel should be wiped off the map. If he has nuclear weapons – he already has missiles that can reach Israel – he just might try to do what he says the Nazis never did. It’s only a “might” but what you would do if you were in charge of the lives and safety of Israelis?

(Please, go ahead; think it through.)

I am guessing Prime Minister Netanyahu is awaiting the results of the Iranian elections in about one month to act. It’s possible the real powers, the ruling mullahs, will decide that the current President has outlived his purpose. It’s even possible some care about the safety of their own grandchildren. (Israel surely has nuclear bombs and the means to deliver them.) So, the Supreme Council of old guys might give the nod to a more accommodating candidate, to someone willing to slow down, or even to make a u-turn. Keep in mind that the Iranians were repeatedly offered active help in developing their civilian nuclear potential in return for abandoning practices useful to the making of bombs.

If Ahmadinejad is re-elected, I think Pres. Obama is going to receive a phone call about 2 PM one day. It will be the Prime Minister of Israel. He will say, “ Well, we have got two hundred planes in the air now, heading toward the Iranian nuclear sites. Are you going to give us a hand or do we have to send in a second wave to set Tehran on fire?”

If our President refuses, many Iranians will die for nothing. Again, what would you do if you were in charge of Israel’s survival?

I have not lost all hope for Mr Obama to begin acting as the President of all Americans. The one reason for my guarded optimism is that he has been lying shamelessly to the left wing of his own party on security issues such as communications eavesdropping, detentions, interrogations, and even Guantanamo. So long as the left of the Democratic Party is angry, I know he is doing something right.

International news: The French have opened a small naval base and intelligence center in Abu Dhabi. No doubt, they think it will help their arms sales in the Gulf. It will also protect, from a diplomatic standpoint, the oil interests of the nationalized company, Total.No matter, that small allied military presence in the Persian Gulf is close enough to Iran to be useful. Things have changed for the better since President Sarkozy was elected two years ago. No more, “Who Stole my Cheese?” (Don’t scratch your head, it’s the title of a very stupid and very popular management fad book. My little joke;forgive me.)

Fascism Explained

Below is a fairly long essay. You may want to read it in installments.

There is also a Part 2 posted on this blog June1st 2009.

The aim of fascism as a political movement is to substitute for individual self-confidence based on skills and achievements uncritical trust in a leader or in an organization. Fascism as a form of government has no objective. Invariably, it ends either in misery or in a catastrophe.

The word “fascist” has been so overused – entirely by Left-leaning people, – that is has become an empty insult. I am guessing that most Americans alive today only know the term as a nasty epithet, perhaps with vague references to Italy’s Mussolini. This is too bad because fascism is a real socio-political phenomenon that took over a fair number of developed societies in the middle-part of the twentieth century. Fascism is also alive, under other names, in and out of power, in the semi-advanced but chronically stagnant societies of Latin America. I think that the fascist temptation is always, forever present in the background of modern societies, including democratic societies. (There are more discussions of contemporary fascism further down in this essay.)

\I am addressing this brief description of fascism to my younger contemporaries, in the US and elsewhere, because fascism has become relevant to the current American situation. I am not trying to shout an alarm call as I would with a fast spreading forest fire, for example, just helping inform the curious and intelligent but justifiably ignorant as I always try to do on this blog. (I also do that on my radio program, every Sunday,on KSCO 1080 AM, Santa Cruz, 11AM-1PM.)

Much has been written about two aspects of the best known fascist movements and regimes. First, there have been many books about the most visible leaders of the most visible fascisms, especially about Hitler and Mussolini. These works have focused on the personalities, the families and the psychological antecedents of those leaders and, to a lesser extent, on the leaders’ inner psychology while they were in power. Second, there have been a number of notable studies of the immediate followers that is, on the large numbers of ordinary people who joined explicitly fascist organizations, such as the infamous SS in Germany. There is current resurgence of interest in the long-lived Spanish brand of fascism, under Francisco Franco. (Franco achieved his dictatorship after a bloody civil war. Yet he governed Spain peacefully for more than thirty years.)

To my knowledge, it’s difficult to find much about the more passive supporters of fascist movements, the great bulk of them. This is an important question because the foremost fascist party in history, the Nazi Party, came to power through largely constitutional means. Many ordinary Germans who were probably nice people supported it. It’s difficult to think about it because of so many movies but initially, supporters of fascism are sweet-faced and pure-hearted. It seems to me many Hitler and Mussolini supporters were hoodwinked, in part because they were too lazy to think of the consequences of their choices.

To make a long story short, the Nazis won the largest number of votes in a regular election, assumed government power and proceeded to eliminate democratic rule. Nazism was brought to power by the naivety of some and by the passivity of others. Mussolini’s Fascist Party seized power with considerable popular support. The short-lived but devastating French version of fascism, was formulated and led by a general and war hero to whom the democratically elected representatives of the Republic handed power willingly.

The less known, less flamboyant, but much longer- lasting Portuguese brand of fascism was invented by a mild-mannered Professor of Economics. Although he was installed after a military coup, Salazar was for practical purposes, little opposed by Portuguese civil society for most of his rule. He led Portugal to the lowest economic rank in Europe, pretty much to Third World status. Similarly, fascist movements came to power mostly peacefully in Hungary and in Romania in the late thirties and early forties. After WWII, General Perón of Argentina implemented a successful fascist program with the assent of the broad mass of Argentineans. He was able to pull it off twice. He left the country in a shamble from which it has not recovered, thirty years later.

The Islamic Republic of Iran is a conventional fascist state installed originally by a broad mass movement. It has limited political representation. Economically, it conforms faithfully to the historical fascist experience of initial success followed by a continuous descent into poverty. This, in spite of massive oil revenues. Its apparatus of repression includes draconian laws, summary arrests, trials without protection for the accused, capital punishment for a broad range of non-homicidal offenses, and prison murders. It looks completely familiar though the repression is done in the name of religion.

So, let me correct a common mistake: Fascism is not a political ideology imposed by force from above. It’s a mass movement. It requires both mute consent from some and a high degree of enthusiasm from others.

All fascist regimes ended in blood and disaster or in whimpering economic disgrace because they showed themselves unable to provide more than the bare necessities of life. Given the dramatic ending of the more dramatic fascist regimes, again, such as Hitler’s and Mussolini, we tend to ignore this prosaic truth: Fascism is a recipe for prolonged poverty, at best. That’s when it does not end in total economic ruination as in Germany. The end of Spanish and of Portuguese fascism were negotiated affairs conducted under Army pressures. Spain’s and Portugal’s economies began taking off immediately after the transfers of power to democratically elected government that lacked any economic experience.

Fascist economic programs never work.

In power, fascist parties invariably attempt to concentrate the levers of the nationaleconomy in a few government hands. They do so either by nationalizing outright the means of production, or by forcing employers and employees into the same state-controlled organizations. Often, they cynically call these organizations “labor unions,” or “trade unions.” This mode of organizations is technically called “corporatism.” The word does not imply that corporations have power but the reverse: The government or its agents make the main decisions for corporations. Of course, corporatism is the complete negation of capitalism which requires all-around competition. That includes the competition of owners and controllers of capital with workers. All-around competition is inherently messy. It’s the converse of a well-trained army marching in lock-step, for example. Fascists hate disorderliness. They are fussy.

Technical note: Nationalization, the government take-over of a company owned by stockholders almost never requires a majority of the shares of ownership. Under current laws, in the US, the control of 15% of the shares is usually sufficient. Frequently, it takes much less than 15% ownership for a government to dictate a corporation’s policies. That’s because the stock is usually widely dispersed, with the largest stockholders owning a very small % of the total.

Fascists concentrate economic control in the name of orderliness.

Fascist governments and fascist movements detest capitalism.

A fascist movement always preaches national unity. Fascists begin by deploring unpleasant partisanship. In the name of national unity, fascist parties seek to weaken open discussion. They use words such as “bi-partisan,” and “overcoming our differences,” repeatedly and until they appear to describe what is obviously desirable. The American practice of democratic governance, by contrast, is based explicitly on confrontations followed by negotiations, one issue at a time, between often-changing coalitions.

When it comes to power, the fascist party abolishes competing political parties. It may do so by absorbing them or by persecuting them and murdering their members. The same fascist government often practices both forms of elimination. Thus, the powerful German Communist Party pre-1933, ended up partly in Nazi concentration camps, partly in the Nazi SS guard.

Fascist politics require the elimination of competing voices.

Fascist movements are often headed by providential leader, one who presents himself a a savior from a grave crisis, real or imagined ( real or imagined, and sometimes made up). The best known fascist leaders such as Hitler, Mussolini, and Perón, have also been charismatic. This is not absolutely necessary, providential is enough. Salazar of Portugal, a rotund, short man, was as lacking in charisma as anyone. Franco was downright sinister, even to many of his followers. Yet, personal charisma certainly helps a fascist leader achieve power. It helps his credulous followers suspend their sense of criticality.

Fascists profit by the unchecked veneration of leadership and they cultivate it.

Fascist movement are usually not content to suppress dissent. They demand the sincere submission of individual willsto the benefit of a greater collective good. That’s because only inner submissions guarantees a long, unchallenged rule in spite of increasingly bad living conditions. The fascist movement imposes this demand first on movement followers and then, on all citizens.

Fascism places the collective (real or not) much ahead of the individual.

The muzzling of the press, serves both to eliminate the voicing of dissent and to achieve the submission of individual wills. A society with no press though is not the most desirable goal of a fascist government. Fascism seeks to whip up mass enthusiasm. So, the best situation is one where the press speaks in a unified voice in support of the fascist party, or of its leader. What is true of the press narrowly defined, is true of other mass media as well. Thus, Hitler, actively encouraged the development of a German cinema entirely to its devotion. So did the French fascist regime between 1940 and 1942 (with active German Nazi help, by the way.) Enthusiasm helps ordinary people bear burdens and it helps them suppress their pangs of conscience when they witness immoral actions.

Fascism requires the uncritical enthusiasm of many to achieve power, and more so to keep it because of the progressive impoverishment it causes, and also to gain toleration for its bad actions.

In some important historical cases, there is not much muzzling to be done because much the bulk of the mainstream media is already supporting the providential leader, before he comes to power. That was the case in Germany in and, to a lesser extent in Italy. Mussolini himself was a journalist, presumably with ability to manipulate the press rather than suppress it. Having the movie industry endorsing unconditionally a fascist leader would prove invaluable in a contemporary society because of the superior ability of movies to engage the whole person’s emotions along with his intellect. Also, it’s likely today that many more people watch movies than read newspapers. This is especially true of the young.

The intelligentsia, the educated class, or a large fraction of it, invariably plays a role in the ascent or legitimation of fascist ideas. Martin Heidegger, then and later, an important German scholar philosopher, became an active Nazi directly upon Hitler’s accession to power. In the case I know second best, that of France, foremost novelists, such as Drieu la Rochelle, and Louis Ferdinand Céline, were early and ardent supporters of fascism. Marcel Déat, a noted philosophy professor with the best academic credentials turned politician, was one of the most effective collaborators in the Nazi occupation of France. (It’s also true that many more French intellectuals supported the totalitarianism of the Left, instead. So?)

Fascism gains intellectual respectability from the endorsement of conventional luminaries.

Given their insistence on national unity, fascist movements must appear respectable to the political center, the main abode of respectability. The great American sociologist Martin Seymour Lipset famously called fascism, “the extremism of the (political) Center.” Hence, fascists cannot afford to suppress opposition openly by illegal means. Once they are in power, they change the laws so that anything they wish, including the mass murder of the mentally- ill and later, the attempted destruction of all Gypsies and all Jews within their reach, is made legal. Before they reach power however, they must appear civilized to avoid unnecessarily alarming ordinary middle-class citizens. In order to pursue both ends, fascist movement employ goons, organized extremists toughs whose actions they are able to condemn when expedient.

Fascist movement commonly employ goon associates to wreck democratic elections by putting unbearable pressure on electoral organs designed for a civil transfer of power. In a normal democracy, it usually takes a small percentage of the votes cast to win an election. Thus, pressure tactics are often successful. Fascist movement sometimes sacrifice their goon wing once they are in power. Hence, Hitler liquidated his strong-arm SA guard in 1934. that is, after he had gained the chancellorship (more or less the presidency), when they had outlived their usefulness as a tool of street terror. Hitler may have had only a hundred or so SA leaders assassinated. The bulk of the SA rank and file learned to stay down. Many were incorporated into the other and rival strong-arm branch of the Nazi movement, the SS.

Fascists use extra-legal methods to gain political power, in addition to legal methods.

Fascist regimes are never conservative. They are revolutionary or radical reformists with an agenda of social justice. These words mean always and everywhere, “equalization.” There is some confusion in history books on this issue for several reasons. First, the head of Spanish fascism, General Franco had a Catholic agenda that looks culturally conservative on the surface. In fact, Franco tried to restore his own archaic version of Catholicism in a country where religious practice had gone down to near-zero levels among the men. Thus, Franco was not trying to conserve anything but to go back to a largely illusory, invented past.

An other source of confusion in that in several European countries and most dramatically, in Germany, big business circles eventually did lend their support to fascists governments. Two reasons for this. First big business leaders were then afraid of a Communism which had not yet demonstrated its incompetence as a solution to anything except the good life. (More below on the relationship between fascism and Communism.) Second, the owners and/or managers of large business enterprises are often natural collectivists. They tend to abhor real, unfettered competition and to prize workplace discipline. Fascist regimes protected them from the one and provided the other to perfection.

I believe that liberal scholars in the West have deliberately fostered the confusion, the idea that conservatism and fascism are two positions on the same axis. I don’t have the space to develop the bases of my belief here. Yet it’s a critical belief I developed during thirty years around liberal and left-wing scholars. Fascists and big business leaders love neatness above all. They detest the give-and-take and the tumultuous competition of the market.

It goes without saying that once they are well established, fascist governments attract the usual conscience-less opportunists, in addition to several breeds of fanatics and sadists. We know roughly what kind of personalities are attracted by the potential to exercise unchecked power. More interesting is the question of what kinds of people tend to become passive followers of fascist movements before they assume power or, in the early stages of their being in power. The question is important again because fascism is not imposed from above. Rather, it comes to be the government through the acquiescence of masses of people no-one would call, “fascist.”

It seems to me that at the basis of this acquiescence lies a combination of dispositional attributes. The first such attribute is probably a tendency to become alarmed, to live in the expectation of frequent or impending disasters. Such inclination will cause some people to throw up their arms from impotence and to search for a radical solution. This makes sense: If the real situation is extraordinarily threatening, the hope that the usual, ordinary solutions will work may vanish. This attitude historically led to an abandonment of institutionally valid politics, such a majority vote, or respect for legality in general, and for individual liberties in particular. Second, since fascism is an impatient recourse to authoritarian solutions, it’s often a psychological return to childhood.  (Almost all children are impatient. ) Under a perceived serious threat, some people will pull harder while others will revert to the days when, in their own personal experience, Mom or Dad made things right. Third, backers of fascism tend to be naive. This is difficult to comprehend because their naivety is often accompanied, in every other respect, by normal intelligence. The naivety I refer to operates as if a corner of their brain shut itself off from regular, adult reality checks. I suspect the part of the brain that becomes activated then is the same that makes us love fairy tales, and fiction in general.  Fourth, and neither least nor last, followers of fascism are almost always burning with a sense of justice. Their requirement for justice is impatient (see above) and of the simplistic, kindergarten variety: Jimmy got two apples; I have to have two apples also, and Charlie must have  two; otherwise, it’s not fair!

In summary:Fascism abhors the idea of the individual will of ordinary citizens. In this, it is the complete moral opposite of classical conservatism which recognizes only the individual. Fascism’s main achievement everywhere and in every epoch, is to make ordinary people poor, dependent and afraid. Fascism is not imposed by force. It wins through the support of the uncritically enthusiastic

This is just and introduction. It’s easy to find good material to read on fascism. Or, you might just decide finally to read the great short book you pretended to have read in high school but never did: GeorgeOrwell’s “1984.”

Next: The relationship between historical fascism and communism. (Hint: Same damn thing!)