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North America's Fascist Future

Economist Paul Bigioni writes in The Toronto Star,

Observing political and economic discourse in North America since the 1970s leads to an inescapable conclusion: The vast bulk of legislative activity favours the interests of large commercial enterprises. Big business is very well off, and successive Canadian and U.S. governments, of whatever political stripe, have made this their primary objective for at least the past 25 years.
Digging deeper into 20th century history, one finds the exaltation of big business at the expense of the citizen was a central characteristic of government policy in Germany and Italy in the years before those countries were chewed to bits and spat out by fascism. Fascist dictatorships were borne to power in each of these countries by big business, and they served the interests of big business with remarkable ferocity.
These facts have been lost to the popular consciousness in North America. Fascism could therefore return to us, and we will not even recognize it. Indeed, Huey Long, one of America’s most brilliant and most corrupt politicians, was once asked if America would ever see fascism. “Yes,” he replied, “but we will call it anti-fascism.”
By exploring the disturbing parallels between our own time and the era of overt fascism, we can avoid the same hideous mistakes. At present, we live in a constitutional democracy. The tools necessary to protect us from fascism remain in the hands of the citizen. All the same, North America is on a fascist trajectory. We must recognize this threat for what it is, and we must change course.

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5 thoughts on “North America's Fascist Future

  1. Fascist? All they want is for people to say “Merry Christmas” instead of “Happy Holidays.” Not what I’d call revolutionary. The original post is similarly unconvincing. Neoliberalism’s certainly leading us in questionable directions, but fascism’s not one of them. Fascism was about a mystical reverence for the collective, while neoliberalism is based on individualism, making it very difficult for it to somehow morph into fascism. Another big difference is that Hitler and Mussolini exploited the somewhat realistic public fear that leftist radicals were going to overthrow the government. Nowadays the only comparable threat is terrorism, but terrorism’s going to have to become much worse for it even to lead to further erosions in civil liberties, much less an authoritarian one-party state with no free speech! Fascism belonged to the 20th century (unless “Islamo-fascism” is really fascism). New forms of authoritarianism may arise one day in the West, but they probably won’t resemble fascism.

  2. ano: They fired a gay for defending the use of happy holidays He is the true vicitim of political correctness.
    ben david. Drug companies spend far more money advertizing viagra than they do on drug research. Most drug research is done by the government and the drug companies would bitch if it weren’t.

  3. It’s time for Americans to finally confront the possibility of fascism in “the land of the free”. Here in Europe the debate has been going on for much further, with people like G?nther Grass even warning of a “worldwide totalitarianism” caused by the Pax Americana. For example Friedman’s “flatism” resembles many of the structures of flat hierarchies Hannah Arendt described long ago.

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