Fear
and the Rise
of American Fascism

fascism
Etymology: Italian fascismo, from fascio bundle, fasces, group, from Latin fascis bundle & fasces.
   1. Often capitalized: a political philosophy, movement, or regime (as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition.
   2. A tendency toward or actual exercise of strong autocratic or dictatorial control.

fasces
Etymology: Latin, from plural of fascis bundle.
A bundle of rods and among them an ax with projecting blade borne before ancient Roman magistrates as a badge of authority.

1. The Inevitability of Change
Change happens. Which upsets most people, because most people want stability.

If a lot of change happens, it upsets people a lot, especially if it happens fast.

Worst of all, if a lot of change happens really fast and keeps on happening fast, the upset that people feel becomes fear.

Fear, when great enough, overrides rationality, leading to the panic of individuals and mass hysteria in entire societies.

2. The Accelerating Rate of Change
But change is the way of the world. Pretty clearly, a billion years of evolution have equipped us with various means of coping with change.

What seems lacking in our mostly excellent equipment is a built-in ability to deal with the kind of change we have been inflicting on ourselves and on the world for the last 400 or so years.

A steady rate of change is one thing, and we even come equipped with ways of dealing with abrupt, unexpected change. But what we’ve been creating lately is a constantly accelerating rate of change.

A lot changed between 1800 and 1900. But a whole lot more changed between 1900 and 2000.

Use any standard for measurement—science, art, technology, religion, communication, apply it to the last four centuries, and you get a curve of accelerating change that looks roughly like this:

3. Reactions to Accelerating Change
One of the clearest means of tracking the irrational reaction to accelerating change is the societal response to science.

This is so partly because science is so damnably rational—its results are after all as certifiable as anything humans do.

It is also so because science, being rational, directly attacks the antique cultural systems of belief—the accretions of habit, tradition, and ritual—that many people rely on to cope with fear of change.

For just one example: You would think that 150 years after publication of "Origin of Species," we would, as a society, have moved on from the predictable early reactions to Darwin’s ideas.

Not so.

Not only do we have new versions of the Scopes trial still taking place, we now have credentialed "scientists" promoting the pseudo-science of "intelligent design."

4. A Government of Fear
Most dangerous of all, and the surest sign that American society is approaching a flash-point of fascism, is the clear and present reality of a government based to an alarming extent on fear and the exploitation of fear: fear of terrorists, fear of science, fear of intelligence and its worrisome products, fear of women, fear of homosexuals, fear of drugs, and on and on.

Above all, America has finally arrived at a government that is based on fear of truth. And the chief mode of operation of such a government, as we saw time and again in the 20th century, is denial: Say it isn’t so.

The big lie technique works not only on those who hear the lies often enough. It also works on those who tell the lies over and over.

If the president says again and again that the climate is not changing, then we—and he—believe truly that the climate is not changing. Thus the "truth" becomes anything we say it is: We are winning the war in Iraq. America is a Christian nation. Homosexuals do not deserve equal rights. Women do not deserve control of their own bodies. And so on and so on.

5. A Government of Denial
So great was the American fear, growing for centuries as the rate of change accelerated, that the spark of 9-11 set off a conflagration of irrationality, a true bonfire of irrational vanities.

The president and his handlers and cronies found that they could say and do almost anything, and most of the populace would believe and, in their great fear, be consoled by their often irrational words and actions.

Maybe the greatest of American ironies is that we responded to psychotic terrorism with supposedly anti-terrorist behavior which has turned out to be qually psychotic, resulting in the piecemeal—but accelerating!—dismantling of 200 years of American struggle for human rights, the balance of power, and the rule of law.

In 2004, slightly more than 50% of the voters approved a government of fear. And an already irrational, belligerent, expedient government became only more so.

6. Hope
Not all hope is lost. The structure of government is still present, but change will require brave people of principle who are willing to risk their profitable careers and comfortable perks.

The task is doubly challenging.

One danger is the American fascists currently running the country. To the clear-eyed, it’s obvious they will do—and say—anything to retain and extend their power. They see this as patriotism, but of course, what they see as their patriotic duty is only their blind, irrational reaction to unfaced, unmediated fear.

The other, even great danger is that our present leaders did not, as often happens, ride to power on a military coup. They achieved power by appealing to the growing fears of like-minded voters, many of whom still exist in a state of complete, irrational denial about the realities of 1) the state of the world, and 2) the state of the American government.

Whoever dares rise to speak against the present domestic threat must face and somehow deal with a populace that is in full, fearful flight not only from terrorists but from a burgeoning culture of continuing change, change, and more change, faster, faster, and faster.

Panicked denial has got us to this perilous place. Only courageous, contagious optimism will get us out.

Clear thinkers of the world, unite!