14 Characteristics of Fascism – We Have Them All

It's time for America to review the 14 characteristics of fascism and, in the process, face our own growing neocon fascist state.

Dr. Lawrence Britt has examined the fascist regimes of Hitler (Germany), Mussolini (Italy), Franco (Spain), Suharto (Indonesia) and several Latin American regimes. Britt found 14 defining characteristics common to each -- And America has all of them.

By Allen L Roland

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 cases 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, Islamic fascists, 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. Divorce, abortion and homosexuality are suppressed and the state is represented as the ultimate guardian of the family institution.

6. Controlled Mass Media -- Sometimes to media is directly controlled by the government, but in other cases, the media is 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 and letters is openly attacked.

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.

State’s crisis political, not financial

Wisconsin’s Legislative Fiscal Bureau was created in 1968 by a Republican governor, Warren Knowles, and a Republican-controlled Legislature.

The purpose was to establish a nonpartisan agency that would provide honest fiscal analysis for state legislators. The bureau has done just that, earning the respect of legislators from both parties, including a young Scott Walker, who frequently cited the bureau when he served in the Assembly.

Less than a month ago, a Fiscal Bureau memo reported that the state had a $121 million surplus through the remainder of the current fiscal year.

That is a fact that is now under attack by Gov. Scott Walker, who the conservative publication Human Events refers to as the “new hero” of the Republican right. Human Events points out -- as the Fiscal Bureau and this newspaper have -- that the state’s fiscal house is not in order and that unsettled issues relating to a payment due Minnesota, as well as rising health care and prison costs, could well create a shortfall before the end of the year.

So it is possible that Wisconsin might need a budget repair bill before the fiscal year is finished.

But Wisconsin has not reached the statutory trigger -- roughly $188 million -- that would demand a repair bill. And though it is not unprecedented in state history for budget repair bills to be introduced before the statutory trigger is reached, why is Walker rushing to act now? Why is he doing so with a bill that massively extends his own authority over Cabinet agencies while creating new positions to be filled by his political cronies?

The governor says that he is doing so because he thinks the trend lines point to more serious shortfalls in the future. We share his concerns about those trends, as do the state’s public employee unions, which have agreed to dramatic concessions in order to help avert fiscal problems.

What we cannot figure out, however, is why the governor engineered roughly $140 million in new tax breaks for multinational corporations, which the Legislature passed in January. Why has he rushed to reject federal transportation funds that other states have rushed to get? Why, in the very week that he was pushing his budget repair bill, did the governor reject federal broadband money, which rural counties have been seeking for years?

The answer is that Walker has made too many budget decisions not with an eye toward fiscal responsibility but with an eye toward rewarding his political benefactors. Out-of-state corporations, road-building interests that did not want competition from high-speed rail, and telecommunications corporations that want to cash in on the demand for broadband all benefit from decisions made by Walker in recent weeks.

Now the governor says that Wisconsin needs to end collective bargaining for public employees and teachers and alter the way in which the state operates on multiple levels in order to address a fiscal crisis.

This is simply absurd.

On the one hand, the governor argues his tax breaks for corporations will not be fully implemented until the next fiscal year. So, he says, we ought not accuse him of ginning up a crisis to achieve political ends. On the other hand, he says that he must act now -- via his budget repair bill -- to address the challenges the state will face in, you guessed it, the next fiscal year.

In an editorial last week, we picked up on arguments made by several legislators that the tax breaks enacted in January were making matters worse in the current fiscal year. The governor disagreed, arguing that the tax breaks are not an issue at this point. We accept the governor’s point with regard to the timeline and note it here because of the importance of clarity in these debates. But budgeting is a bit more complex than the governor chooses to acknowledge.

As Nicholas Johnson, vice president for state fiscal policy with the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, noted in a memo to the Washington Post, “(In) a technical sense, the tax cuts didn’t create the current-year shortfalls that in turn are creating the specific opening for the ‘budget repair bill.’
However, it is true that the tax cuts are worsening the state’s overall budget picture, and it is the state’s overall budget picture -- not the current-year picture alone -- that the (governor) is using to justify going after the workers.”

Debates about budgeting are often complex. Lots of heads are spinning. More importantly, the governor, his aides and the media echo chamber are spinning. It is easy to get confused.

So let’s get down to the basics:

1. The Fiscal Bureau reported in January that Wisconsin had a $121.4 million surplus through the end of the fiscal year.

2. The state has an unresolved dispute with Minnesota and some potential spikes in health care and prison costs that could require a budget repair bill. But the state has not reached the trigger point where such a bill would be necessary.

3. When the trigger point is reached, the wise counsel of the Legislature’s senior member, state Sen. Fred Risser, D-Madison, is well taken: “This is not a crisis. We’ve done budget repair bills before. We’ve always been able to sort these things out.”

Risser is absolutely right. He is also right when he says: “We now know this struggle is not about the money. Public employee unions have offered many concessions to help solve the state’s fiscal crisis. When those efforts at compromise were ignored, it became clear that Governor Walker and his allies are part of a national agenda, fueled by big-money conservative groups, to destroy the unions at all costs.”

That’s the bottom line: This is not about the money. This is not a fiscal crisis. This is a political crisis. And Walker has the power to resolve it by refocusing on fiscal issues, as opposed to pursuing the political goal of breaking unions.