The United States today: Fascism by any other name

“Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power.”—Benito Mussolini [former fascist dictator]

“Freedom only for the members of the government, only for the members of the Party—though they are quite numerous—is no freedom at all.”—Rosa Luxemburg

It is sometimes difficult to recognize that which is in plain view.

The noted author, philosopher, psychiatrist and revolutionary Frantz Fanon, stated that, “Sometimes people hold a core belief that is very strong. When they are presented with evidence that works against that belief, the new evidence cannot be accepted.” In large measure, this is precisely the affliction infecting a huge portion of people in the United States in this year of 2012. It is what Fanon further describes as “cognitive dissonance.”

The late great people’s historian Howard Zinn elaborated on this when he said, “If those in charge of our society—politicians, corporate executives, and owners of press and television—can dominate our ideas, they will be secure in their power. They will not need soldiers patrolling the streets. We will control ourselves.” In other words, as long as the corporate elite of this nation, through their proxies of the corporate-owned politicians and the corporate-owned media can define and control the very ideas of everyday ordinary Black, White, Brown, Red, and Yellow people, they are “secure in the power” while we remain de facto political and economic slaves. This is why critical thought and analyses in the United States is at an all time low.

Then there are some so-called “progressives” and Leftists who prefer to argue and intellectually masturbate about whether or not fascism is a reality in this nation. Meanwhile, corporate ‘personhood,’ the odious “Patriot Act,” and the draconian indefinite detention (NDAA) of U.S. citizens without the right to due process (i.e., charge, bail, trial, jury, legal defense, etc.) have become the law of the land.

The “merger of state (i.e., the body politic) and corporate power” is now both official and legal in the United States. In starker terms, this “merger of state and corporate power” means that government/police frame-ups, disappearances, alleged “accidents,” and the mysterious deaths or murders of political dissidents (usually accompanied by some form of government phony ‘plausible deniability’), are all quite legal in this nation. Fascism is irrefutably here, and the Bill of Rights of the U.S. Constitution (which was tenuous at best) is, for all practical purposes, dead and buried. This represents the reality of U.S. president Barack Obama’s fake “hope and change” and the overwhelming capitulation by both Democrat and Republican politicians to the avaricious and relatively tiny U.S. corporate elite. Politically and euphemistically speaking, the ‘chickens have [finally] come home to roost.’ To reiterate: Fascism is irrefutably here.

Thanks to the insatiable greed of the U.S. and global corporate elite, the everyday peoples of this nation and world are experiencing bloody profit-motivated wars, in addition to the horrible economic austerity in their respective home countries. This includes not only the everyday people of so-called ‘Third World’ nations, but also of the United States, Canada, and Europe, etc. For example, the ongoing economic turmoil, political, and social unrest in Greece, Spain, Portugal, Ireland, and elsewhere, are a reflection of the vicious economic austerity measures being taken by the global corporate vultures of the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, etc. Economic austerity measures are destroying the economic and social fabric of everyday people in the United States and around the world. This of course is part and parcel of the endless greed on the part of a tiny but powerful elite, both in the U.S. and globally.

Corporatism promotes the subversion of democracy, and when merged with the political state, it dominates and utterly destroys democracy, even as de facto fascism is simultaneously ushered in. Due to the fact that the people of the United States have been kept in a perpetual state of historical distortion and ignorance, they are particularly vulnerable to the subversion of their ‘democracy’ and “cognitive dissonance” in this regard.

Notwithstanding the barbaric, sadistic, and inhumane treatment accorded to the enormous population of prisoners, including political prisoners, in the United States; even the unincarcerated everyday people of this nation are themselves actually not free. As Rosa Luxemburg correctly stated: “Freedom only for members of the government, only for members of the Party—though they are quite numerous—is no freedom at all.”

Ignoring the reality of fascism in the United States only serves to make it stronger and perpetuates the illusion of democracy in this nation. It is imperative that we understand that what is needed is total systemic change in this country.

The politicians of the Democrat and Republican parties are in service to the corporate elite, not the people. These politicians have already brought about a legalized form of de facto fascism in the United States, and they and this entire corrupt political system need to be relegated to the dustbin of history. Only the everyday ordinary people of this nation can and must accomplish this. Times are perilous for this nation and Mother Earth as a whole. They will get worse—if we do not reclaim our collective humanity NOW!

Onward, then, my sisters and brothers! Onward!

Intrepid Report Associate Editor Larry Pinkney is a veteran of the Black Panther Party, the former Minister of Interior of the Republic of New Africa, a former political prisoner and the only American to have successfully self-authored his civil / political rights case to the United Nations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. In connection with his political organizing activities, Pinkney was interviewed in 1988 on the nationally televised PBS News Hour, formerly known as The MacNeil / Lehrer News Hour. Pinkney is a former university instructor of political science and international relations, and his writings have been published in various places, including The Boston Globe, the San Francisco BayView newspaper, the Black Commentator, Global Research (Canada), LINKE ZEITUNG (Germany), and Mayihlome News (Azania/South Africa). For more about Larry Pinkney see the book, Saying No to Power: Autobiography of a 20th Century Activist and Thinker, by William Mandel [Introduction by Howard Zinn]. (Click here to read excerpts from the book.)