A sermon on
Fascism by a Unitarian minister in Austin, Texas: Living
Under
Fascism
Davidson Loehr
7 November
2004
First Unitarian Universalist Church of
Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
512-452-6168 www.austinuu.org
SERMON: Living Under
Fascism
:: You may wonder why anyone would try to use the
word
"fascism" in a serious discussion of where America
is
today. It sounds like cheap name-calling, or
melodramatic
allusion to a slew of old war movies. But I am
serious. I
don't mean it as name-calling at all. I mean to
persuade
you that the style of governing into which
is most accurately described as fascism, and that
the
necessary implications of this fact are rightly regarded
as
terrifying. That's what I am about here. And even if
I
don't persuade you, I hope to raise the level of
your
thinking about who and where we are now, to add some
nuance
and perhaps some useful insights.
::
The word comes from the Latin word "Fasces," denoting a
bundle
of sticks tied together. The individual sticks
represented
citizens, and the bundle represented the state.
The message of
this metaphor was that it was the
bundle that was significant,
not the individual sticks. If
it sounds un-American, it's worth
knowing that the Roman
Fasces appear on the wall behind the
Speaker's podium in
the chamber of the US House of
Representatives.
:: Still, it's an unlikely word. When most
people hear the
word "fascism" they may think of the racism
and
anti-Semitism of Mussolini and Hitler. It is true that
the
use of force and the scapegoating of fringe groups are
part
of every fascism. But there was also an economic
dimension
of fascism, known in
"corporatism," which was an
essential ingredient of
Mussolini's and Hitler's tyrannies.
So-called corporatism
was adopted in
held up as a model by quite a few
intellectuals and policy
makers in the
:: As I mentioned a few
weeks ago (in "The Corporation Will
Eat Your Soul"), Fortune
magazine ran a cover story on
Mussolini in 1934, praising his
fascism for its ability to
break worker unions, disempower
workers and transfer huge
sums of money to those who controlled
the money rather than
those who earned it.
:: Few Americans are aware of or can recall how so many
Americans and Europeans viewed economic fascism as the wave
of
the future during the 1930s. Yet reviewing our past may
help
shed light on our present, and point
the way to a better future.
So I want to begin by looking
back to the last time fascism
posed a serious threat to
:: In Sinclair Lewis's 1935 novel "It Can't Happen Here," a
conservative southern politician is helped to the
presidency by
a nationally syndicated radio talk show host.
The politician -
Buzz Windrip - runs his campaign on
family values, the flag, and
patriotism. Windrip and the
talk show host portray advocates of
traditional American
d emocracy - those concerned with
individual rights and
freedoms - as anti-American. That was 69
years ago.
:: One of the most outspoken American fascists
from the
1930s was economist Lawrence Dennis. In his 1936 book,
The
Coming American Fascism - a coming which he anticipated
and
cheered - Dennis declared that defenders of
"18th-century Americanism" were sure to become "the
laughing
stock of their own countrymen." The big stumbling
block to the
development of economic fascism, Dennis
bemoaned, was "liberal
norms of law or constitutional
guarantees of private
rights."
:: So it is important for us to recognize that, as
an
economic system,fascism was widely accepted in the
1920s
and '30s, and nearly worshiped by some powerful
American
industrialists. And fascism has always, and
explicitly,
been opposed to liberalism of all
kinds.
:: Mussolini, who helped create modern fascism,
viewed
liberal ideas a s the enemy. "The Fascist conception
of
life," he wrote, "stresses the importance of the State
and
accepts the individual only in so far as his
interests
coincide with the State. It is opposed to
classical
liberalism [which] denied the State in the name of
the
individual; Fascism reasserts the rights of the State
as
expressing the real essence of the individual." (In
1932
Mussolini wrote, with the help of Giovanni Gentile,
an
entry for the Italian Encyclopedia on the definition
of
fascism. You can read the whole entry at
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/mussolini-fascism.html )
:: Mussolini thought it was
unnatural for a government to
protect individual rights: The
essence of fascism, he
believed, is that government should be
the master, not the
servant, of the people.
:: Still, fascism is a word that is completely foreign to
most
of us. We need to know what it is, and how we can know
it when
we se e it.
:: In an essay coyly titled "Fascism Anyone?,"
Dr. Lawrence
Britt, a political scientist, identifies social
and
political agendas common to fascist regimes.
His
comparisons of Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, Suharto,
and
Pinochet yielded this list of 14
"identifying
characteristics of fascism." (The following article
is from
Free Inquiry magazine, Volume 23, Number 2. Read it
at
www.secularhumanism.org/library/fi/britt_23_2.htm)
See how familiar they
sound.
1. Powerful and Continuing
Nationalism
:: Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of
patriotic
mottos, slogans, symbols, songs, and other
paraphernalia.
Flags are seen everywhere, as are flag symbols on
clothing
and in public displays.
2. Disdain
for the Recognition of Human Rights
:: Because of fear of
enemies and the need for security,
the people in fascist regimes
are persuaded that human
rights can be ignored in certain case s
because of "need."
The people tend to look the other way or even
approve of
torture, summary executions, assassinations,
long
incarcerations of prisoners, etc.
3.
Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause
::
The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy
over the
need to eliminate a perceived common threat or
foe: racial,
ethnic or religious minorities; liberals;
communists;
socialists, terrorists, etc.
4. Supremacy of the
Military
:: Even when there are widespread domestic
problems, the
military is given a disproportionate amount of
government
funding, and the domestic agenda is neglected.
Soldiers and
military service are
glamorized.
5. Rampant Sexism
:: The
governments of fascist nations tend to be almost
exclusively
male-dominated. Under fascist regimes,
traditional gender roles
are made more rigid. Opposition to
abortion is high, as is
homophobia and anti-gay
legislation and national
policy.
6. Controlled Mass Media
::
Sometimes the media are directly controlled by the
government,
but in other cases, the media are indirectly
controlled by
government regulation, or sympathetic media
spokespeople and
executives. Censorship, especially in
war time, is very
common.
7. Obsession with National
Security
:: Fear is used as a motivational tool by the
government
over the masses.
8. Religion and
Government are Intertwined
:: Governments in fascist nations tend
to use the most
common religion in the nation as a tool to
manipulate
public opinion. Religious rhetoric and terminology
is
common from government leaders, even when the major
tenets
of the religion are diametrically opposed to
the
government's policies or actions.
9.
Corporate Power is Protected
:: The industrial and business
aristocracy of a fascist
nation often are the ones who put the
government leaders
into power, creating a mutually
beneficial
business/government relationship and power
elite.
10. Labor Power is Suppressed
:: Because the organizing power of labor is the only real
threat
to a fascist government, labor unions are either
eliminated
entirely, or are severely suppressed.
11. Disdain for
Intellectuals and the Arts
:: Fascist nations tend to
promote and tolerate open
hostility to higher education, and
academia. It is not
uncommon for professors and other academics
to be censored
or even arrested. Free expression in the arts is
openly
attacked, and governments often refuse to fund the
arts.
12. Obsession with Crime and
Punishment
:: Under fascist regimes, the police are given
almost
limitless power to enforce laws. The people are
often
willing to overlook police abuses and even forego
civil
liberties in the name of patriotism. There is often
a
national police force with virtually unlimited power
in
fascist nations
13. Rampant Cronyism and
Corruption
:: Fascist regimes almost always are governed by
groups of
friends and associates who appoint each other to
government
positions and use governmental power and authority
to
protect their friends from accountability. It is
not
uncommon in fascist regimes for national
resources
and even treasures to be appropriated or even
outright
stolen by government
leaders.
14. Fraudulent Elections
::
Sometimes elections in fascist nations are a complete
sham.
Other times elections are manipulated by smear
campaigns against
or even assassination of opposition
candidates, use of
legislation to control voting numbers or
political district
boundaries, and manipulation of the
media. Fascist nations also
typically use their judiciaries
to manipulate or control
elections.
: : This list will be familiar to students of
political
science. But it should be familiar to students of
religion
as well, for much of it mirrors the social and
political
agenda of religious fundamentalisms worldwide. It is
both
accurate and helpful for us to understand fundamentalism
as
religious fascism, and fascism as political
undamentalism.
They both come from very primitive parts of us
that have
always been the default setting of our species:
amity
toward our in-group, enmity toward out-groups,
hierarchical
deference to alpha male figures, a
powerful
identification with our territory, and so forth. It is
that
brutal default setting that all civilizations have tried
to
raise us above, but it is always a fragile
thing, civilization, and has to be achieved over and over
and
over again.
:: But, again, this is not
fascism.
:: In early 1944,
the New York Times asked Vice President
Henry Wallace to, as
Wallace noted, "write a piece
answering the following questions:
What is a fascist? How
many fascists have we? How dangerous are
they?"
:: Vice President Wallace's answer to those questions
was
published in The New York Times on
height of
the war against the Axis powers of
our society
today.
:: "The really dangerous American fascist," Wallace
wrote,
"is the man who wants to do in the United States in
an
American way what Hitler did in Germany in a Prussian
way.
The American fascist would prefer not to use violence.
His
method is to poison the channels of public
information.
With a fascist the problem is never how best to
present the
truth to the public but how best to use the news to
deceive
the public into giving the fascist and his group more
money
or more power."
:: In hi s strongest
indictment of the tide of fascism he
saw rising in America,
Wallace added, "They claim to be
super-patriots, but they would
destroy every liberty
guaranteed by the Constitution. They
demand free
enterprise, but are the spokesmen for monopoly and
vested
interest. Their final objective toward which all
their
deceit is directed is to capture political power so
that,
using the power of the state and the power of
the
market simultaneously, they may keep the common man
in
eternal subjection." By these standards, a few of
today's
weapons for keeping the common people in eternal
subjection
include NAFTA, the World Trade Organization,
union-busting,
cutting worker benefits while increasing
CEO
pay, elimination of worker benefits, security and
pensions,
rapacious credit card interest, and outsourcing of
jobs -
not to mention the largest prison system in the
world.
The Perfect Storm
:: Our
curre nt descent into fascism came about through a
kind of
"Perfect Storm," a confluence of three unrelated
but mutually
supportive schools of thought.
1. The first stream of
thought was the imperialistic dream
of the Project for the New
American Century. I don't
believe anyone can understand the past
four years without
reading the Project for the New American
Century,
published in September 2000 and authored by many who
have
been prominent players in the Bush
administrations,
including Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz,Richard
Perle and
Donald Kagan to name only a few. This report saw the
fall
of Communism as a call for
rulers of the world, to establish a new
worldwide empire.
They spelled out the military enhancements we
would need,
then noted, sadly, that these wonderful plans would
take a
long time, unless there could be a catastrophic
and
catalyzing event like a new
leaders turn
country. There was no clear interest in
religion in
this report, and no clear concern with local
economic
policies.
2. A second powerful
stream must be credited to Pat
Robertson and his Christian
Reconstructionists, or
Dominionists. Long dismissed by most of
us as a screwball,
the Dominionist style of Christianity which
he has been
preaching since the early 1980s is now the most
powerful
religious voice in the Bush
administration.
:: Katherine Yurica, who transcribed over
1300 pages of
interviews from Pat Robertson?s "700 Club" shows
in the
1980s, has shown how Robertson and his chosen
guests
consistently, openly and passionately argued that
America
must become a theocracy under the control of
Christian
Dominionists. Robertson is on record saying democracy
is a
terrible form of government unless it is run by his kind
of
Christians. He also rails constantly against taxing
the
rich, against public education, social programs and
welfare
- and prefers Deuteronomy 28 over the teachings of
Jesus.
He is clear that women must remain homebound as
obedient
servants of men, and that abortions,
like
homosexuals, should not be allowed. Robertson has also
been
clear that other kinds of Christians,
including
Episcopalians and Presbyterians, are enemies of
Christ.
(The Yurica Report. Search under this name, or
or
"Despoiling America" by Katherine Yurica on the
internet.)
3. The third major component of this Perfect
Storm has been
the desire of very wealthy Americans and
corporate CEOs for
a plutocracy that will favor profits by the
very rich and
disempowerment of the vast majority of
American
workers, the destruction of workers' unions, and
the
alliance of government to help achieve these greedy
goals.
It is a condition some have called socialism for the
rich,
capitalism for the poor, and which others
recognize
as a reincarnation of Social Darwinism. This strain
of
thought has been present throughout American
history.
Seventy years ago, they tried to finance a military
coup to
replace Franklin Delano Roosevelt and
establish
General Smedley Butler as a fascist dictator in
1934.
Fortunately, they picked a general who really was
a
patriot; he refused, reported the scheme, and spoke
and
wrote about it. As Canadian law professor Joel Bakan
wrote
in the book and movie "The Corporation," they have
now
achieved their coup without firing a
shot.
:: Our plutocrats have had no particular interest
in
religion. Their global interests are with an
imperialist
empire, and their domestic goals are in undoing all
the New
Deal reforms of Franklin Delano Roosevelt that
enabled
the rise of
:: Another ill wind in this Perfect Storm
is more important
than its crudity might suggest: it was
President Clinton's
sleazy sex with a young but eager intern in
the White
House. This incident, and
about it, focused the certainties of conservatives on
the
fact that "liberals" had neither moral compass nor
moral
concern, and therefore represented a dangerous threat
to
the moral fiber of
be hard to quantify, I think they were
profound.
:: These "storm" components have no necessary
connection,
and come from different groups of thinkers, many of
whom
wouldn't even like one another. But together, they form
a
nearly complete web of command and control, which
has
finally gained control of
world.
What's
coming
:: When all fascisms exhibit the same social and
political
agendas (the 14 points listed by Britt), then it is
not
hard to predict wh ere a new fascist uprising will lead.
And
it is not hard. The actions of fascists and
the
social and political effects of fascism and
fundamentalism
are clear and sobering. Here is some of what's
coming, what
will be happening in our country in the next few
years:
* The theft of all social security funds, to be
transferred
to those who control money, and the increasing
destitution
of all those dependent on social security and
social
welfare programs.
* Rising numbers of
uninsured people in this country that
already has the highest
percentage of citizens without
health insurance in the developed
world.
* Increased loss of funding for public education
combined
with increased support for vouchers, urging Americans
to
entrust their children's education to Christian
schools.
* More restrictions on civil liberties as America is
turned
into the police state necessary for fascism to
work
* Withdrawal of virtuall y all funding for National
Public
Radio and the Public Broadcasting System. At their
best,
these media sometimes encourage critical questioning,
so
they are correctly seen as enemies of the
state's
official stories.
* The reinstatement of
a draft, from which the children of
privileged parents will
again be mostly exempt, leaving our
poorest children to fight
and die in wars of imperialism
and greed that could never
benefit them
anyway. (That was my one-sentence Veterans' Day
sermon for
this year.)
* More imperialistic
invasions: of
construction of a huge permanent embassy in
* More restrictions on speech, under the flag of national
security.
* Control of the internet to remove or cripple it as
an
instrument of free communication that is exempt
from
government control. This will be presented as a
necessary
anti-terrorist measure.
* Efforts to
remove the tax-exempt status of churches like
this one, and to
characterize them as anti-American.
* Tighter control of the
editorial bias of almost all
media, and demonization of the few
media they are unable to
control - the New York Times, for
instance.
* Continued outsourcing of jobs, including
more
white-collar jobs, to produce greater profits for those
who
control the money and direct the society,
while
simultaneously reducing America's workers to a
more
desperate and powerless status.
* Moves in
the banking industry to make it impossible for
an increasing
number of Americans to own their homes. As
they did in the
1930s, those who control the money know
that it is to their
advantage and profit to keep others
renting rather than
owning.
* Criminalization of those who protest, as
un-American,
with arrests, detentions and harassment increasing.
We
already have a higher percentage of our citizens in
prison
than any other country in the world. That
percentage
will increase.
* In the near future,
it will be illegal or at least
dangerous to say the things I
have said here this morning.
In the fascist story, these things
are un-American. In the
real history of a democratic
profoundly patriotic, as the kind of critical
questions
that kept the American spirit alive - the kind
of
questions, incidentally, that our media were supposed to
be
pressing.
::Can these schemes work? I
don't think so. I think they
are murderous, rapacious and
insane. But I don't know.
Maybe they can. Similar schemes have
worked in countries
like Chile, where a democracy in which over
90% voted
has been reduced to one in which only about 20%
vote
because they say, as Americans are learning to say, that
it
no longer matters
who you vote
for.
Hope
:: In the meantime, is there
any hope, or do we just band
together like lemmings and dive off
a cliff? Yes, there is
always hope, though at times it is more
hidden, as it is
now.
:: As some critics are
now saying, and as I have been
preaching and writing for almost
twenty years, America's
liberals need to grow beyond political
liberalism, with its
often self-absorbed focus on individual
rights to the
exclusion of individual responsibilities to the
larger
society. Liberals will have to construct a more
complete
vision with moral and religious grounding. That does
not
mean confessional Christianity. It means the
legitimate heir to Christianity. Such a legitimate heir
need not
be a religion, though it must have clear moral
power, and be
able to attract the minds and hearts of a
voting majority of
Americans.
:: And the new liberal vision must be larger than
that of
the conservative religious vision that will be
appointing
judges, writing laws and bending the cultural norms t
oward
hatred and exclusion for the foreseeable future.
The
conservatives deserve a lot of admiration. They have
spent
the last thirty years studying American politics,
forming
their vision and learning how to gain control in
the
political system. And it worked; they have won. Even
if
liberals can develop a bigger vision, they still have
all
that time-consuming work to do. It won't be fast. It
isn't
even clear that liberals will be willing to do it; they
may
instead prefer to go down with the ship they're used
to.
:: One man who has been tireless in his investigations
and
critiques of
Ruppert, whose postings usually read
as though he is wound
way too tight. But he offers four pieces
of advice about
what we can do now, and they seem reality-based
enough to
pass on to you. This is
* First, he says you should get out of
debt.
* Second is to spend your money and time on things
that
give you energy and provide you with useful
information.
* Third is to stop spending a penny with major
banks, news
media and corporations that feed you lies and leave
you
angry and exhausted.
* And fourth is to
learn how money works and use it like a
(political)weapon - as
he predicts the rest of the world
will be doing against us.
(from
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/110504_snap_out.shtml)
:: That's advice written
this week. Another bit of advice
comes from sixty years ago,
from
President, Henry
Wallace. Wallace said, "Democracy, to
crush fascism internally,
must...develop the ability to
keep people fully employed and at
the same time balance the
budget. It must put human beings first
and dollars second.
It must appeal to reason and decency and not
to violence
and deceit. We must not tolerate oppressive
government or
indu strial oligarchy in the form of monopolies
and
cartels."
:: Still another way to
understand fascism is as a kind of
colonization. A simple
definition of "colonization" is that
it takes people's stories
away, and assigns them supportive
roles in stories that empower
others at their
expense. When you are taxed to support a
government that
uses you as a means to serve the ends of others,
you are -
ironically - in a state of taxation without
representation.
That's where this country started, and it's
where we are
now.
:: I don't know the next
step. I'm not a political
activist; I'm only a preacher. But
whatever you do,
whatever we do, I hope that we can remember
some very basic
things that I think of as eternally
true.
One is that the vast majority of people are good
decent
people who mean and do as well as they know how. Very
few
people are evil, though some are. But we all live
in
families where so me of our blood relatives support
things
we hate. I believe they mean well, and the way to
rebuild
broken bridges is through greater
understanding,
compassion, and a reality-based story that is
more
inclusive and empowering for the vast majority of
us.
:: Those who want to live in a reality-based story
rather
than as serfs in an ideology designed to transfer
power,
possibility and hope to a small ruling elite have much
long
and hard work to do, individually and
collectively. It will not be either easy or quick.
:: But we
will do it. We will go forward in hope and in
courage. Let us
seek that better path, and find the courage
to take it - step,
by step, by step.
* * * * *
About
Our Minister, Davidson Loehr, Ph.D.
:: His academic
credentials include a doctoral degree from
the
religion and philosophy of science, a master's degree
from
the same university in methods for studying
religions,
and a bachelor's degree in music theory from the
of
::
Dr. Loehr is a regular contributor to the
American-Statesman and represents our church at activities
and
events sponsored by the Austin Area Interreligious
Ministries.
:: Before becoming a Unitarian Universalist
minister, Dr.
Loehr was a combat photographer in
professional musician, playing clarinet and saxophone
in
road bands and combos. His office is lined with
astounding
photographs of places he has visited and people he
has
known.