Is the Bush Administration Fascist?

Short Answer: Nope.

Slightly Longer Answer: George W. Bush doesn't have the imagination to be a fascist, and Dick Cheney's too busy counting his money to put up any kind of kampf about anything.

However, and this is the main reason that so many lefties bring up the spectre of Nazism and fascism when they talk about Bush and company: at least 25% of Bush's supporters ARE fascist. George Bush is not interested in the kind of total social mobilization that is the goal of fascism: he wants a public as disengaged, self-absorbed and distracted as possible: keep the taxes low, send the poor kids to do the fighting, and let the next guy deal with the fallout while as much cash as possible is shoveled to the upper one percent.

Sometimes, especially during elections and when the polls are shakey, Bush likes to pull out some moves from the fascist PR playbook to work that 25% into a frenzied lather. A good example of that would be the uber-creepy "Freedom Walk" being planned for September in D.C. (I'm hoping I can check it out), which is being designed to boost flagging support for the Iraq war by reminding people of September Eleventh and dazzling the rubes with formation marching and the soothing reactio-country sounds of Clint Black.

It's those rubes who are pinning for total social mobilization around the twin poles of radical domestic Christianization and a foreign policy of perpetual war against alien cultures that represent fascism's face in the United States. Bush and company will always care more about money than about Christ, but the true believers are dreaming of a Bush-lead New Age, in which secular humanists, atheists, Muslims, gays and sundry unbelievers are swept away by a government in which democratic institutions have been replaced by a neanderthal vision of Christianity that guides all lawmaking.

Historian Robert O. Paxton's book The Anatomy of Fascism offers a list of what he calls "mobilizing passions" which form the basis for mass fascist movements. Any of this ring bells?

"A sense of overwhelming crisis beyond the reach of any traditional solutions."

"The primacy of the group, towards which one has duties superior to every right, whether individual or universal, and the subordination of the individual to it."

"The belief that one's group is a victim, a sentiment that justifies any action, without legal or moral limits, against its enemies, both internal and external." (Apparently the 9/11 attacks justify any horror or crime against humanity: witness right-wing reaction to Abu Ghraib)

"Dread of the group's decline under the corrosive effects of individualistic liberalism, class conflict, and alien influences." (Stop me if you've heard any of this!)

"The need for closer intergration of a purer community, by consent if possible, or by exclusionary violence if necessary."

"The need for authority by natural leaders (always male), culminating in a national chief who alone is capable of incarnating the group's destiny."

"The superiority of the leader's instincts over abstract and universal reason." (Fuck the reality-based community, Bush creates new worlds with every trip to the bathroom!)

"The beauty of violence and the efficacy of will, when they are devoted to the group's success." (Fox News ran clips of the air bombardment of Bagdad with accompanying musical score...seriously)

"The right of the chosen people to dominate others without restraint from any kind of human or divine law, right being decided by the sole criterion of the group's prowess within a Darwinian struggle." (The right might not like evolution much, but they're sure down with "survival of the fittest")

Spend some time on FreeRepublic.com or Little Green Footballs (if you can stomach it), listen to the crazy spewing from the mouth of your radicalized relatives or co-workers and see how many of these "passions" you can identify within a week. Bush might not have the vision to see a New Christian World Order, but his sign-wavers and goose-steppers sure do. Paxton also stresses that a significant crisis in the democratic order must occur for the ruling class to turn to a fascist movement to save them from revolution from the left or social collapse. We're not there yet, but imagine what might happen if the economy collapses or the U.S. is hit with a nuclear or biological terror attack. These rubes, who until now have been content to write checks, go to rallies and write brain-numbingly stupid letters to the editor, might find themselves some leaders who will give their vision of the world more than lip service. (Rick Santorum has the glassy eyes and droolingy insane rhetoric of a True Believer.)