by
Jack D. Douglas

Recently
by Jack D. Douglas: America’s
Social Psychosis

My fascistograph
index would rank the following as the vital, core factors and roots
of fascism in a society, from the most important powers at the top
down.  

1. A hardcore,
totalitarian party masquerading as the people’s party, but secretly
working totally with the rich and powerful corporations, uniting
them under the party. [Fascism, unlike communism and other forms
of socialism and so on, is above all a corporatist form of totalitarianism.] 

2. Stroking
mass vanity with big lies – “Germany over all,” “America is the
greatest nation in the world.” And mass greed and lust for power
with utopian promises of free money and endless prosperity and great
conquests over nature and nations

3. Infiltration
secretly by the party of all major institutions at the top by secret
take-overs, threats, bribes, co-optation, etc. 

4. Secret media
content control in many ways by the ruler[s]

5. Imperial
powers, party powers, the ruler principle

6. Massive,
powerful secret police under direct control of the ruler[s], spying,
black ops, 

7. Secretly
taking over the traditional laws and institutions, hollowing them
out and refilling the empty forms with fascist ideology

8. Filling
the government secretly with party hacks and puppets from top to
bottom

9. Politically
correct education and mass-mind training from early age [pre-school
onward] 

10. Foreigners,
racial or religious or party groups or others  used as “evil
and secret witches”  to stoke terror and blood lust for
wars, used as threats and as conquests to fuel vanity and hubris.
[Germany and the US.  Used the “communists” as witches to inspire
terror and hate and blood lust in their early rise to power, then
used religious-race groups, foreign enemies, drug fiends destroying
the nation, etc.]

Fascist regimes
follow this general index of core factors. But they differ widely
in specific, public details. Germany was very different in public
from Italy, Mexico, etc. But their core was roughly the same, though
the rose to power in somewhat different ways, ranking the index
factors somewhat differently. 

Note that factors
often mistakenly seen as core factors of fascism, such as “racism,”
are common but not really core factors. The rulers use racism when
it is useful and shun it when it is not. Hitler and the US used
racism blatantly in later years. Hitler had screamed against the
Jews in Mein Kampf, but most people did not take it too seriously
until later. The US fascist system grew by incorporating poor blacks
and browns, raging against the “commie witches” and “drug fiends”
and “Russian witches” and “Chinese witches” and “Iraqi witches”
and on and on, but recently  has become virulently anti-Islam,
treating that as a “racial taint,” though technically it is religious,
not racial.  

Needless to
say, there has been vast historical and political argument about
what the real fascism is. Much of this has been ideological. The
historical truth is clearly that there are different forms of monarchy,
democracy, fascism, communism and so on. There are common, core
factors in such categories when used correctly, empirically [historically],
but there are always important variations. The US fascism system
pretends to be drastically different from German and Italian fascism,
but is a corporatist, totalitarian, party system masquerading as
the “welfare state” for all the people and so on down the index.
The US Is much more like Italian, Mussolini, fascism than like Hitler’s
ruler-dominated party. 

I have thought
endlessly about this core issue for most of my adult life, but I
do not pretend to be a ruler dictating such things. There are good
arguments for different rankings of the core index factors, certainly
because there have been real historical differences in fascist systems,
like in democracy systems. I have used the Nazi, Italian, and US
fascist systems as my main historical examples for constructing
this core index and have used the US as the most important fascist
system, since it is the one that threatens all of mankind today.

America is
mankind’s existential threat – a doomsday threat with immense, world
shattering arsenals of weapons of mass destruction of every kind,
from thermonuclear weapons to utopian financial central planning
of money. 

May
4, 2013

Jack
D. Douglas [send him mail]
is a retired professor of sociology from the University of California
at San Diego. He has published widely on all major aspects of human
beings, most notably The
Myth of the Welfare State.

Copyright
© 2013 by LewRockwell.com. Permission to reprint in whole or in
part is gladly granted, provided full credit is given.

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