Take heart or worry
Is it a good sign or a bad sign that the founder of The American Conservative magazine thinks neocons are proto-fascists?
Hunger for DictatorshipStudents of history inevitably think in terms of periods: the New Deal, McCarthyism, "the Sixties" (1964-1973), the NEP, the purge trials--all have their dates. Weimar, whose cultural excesses made effective propaganda for the Nazis, now seems like the antechamber to Nazism, though surely no Weimar figures perceived their time that way as they were living it. We may pretend to know what lies ahead, feigning certainty to score polemical points, but we never do.
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I don't think there are yet real fascists in the administration, but there is certainly now a constituency for them--hungry to bomb foreigners and smash those Americans who might object. And when there are constituencies, leaders may not be far behind. They could be propelled into power by a populace ever more frustrated that the imperialist war it has supported--generally for the most banal of patriotic reasons--cannot possibly end in victory. And so scapegoats are sought, and if we can’t bomb Arabs into submission, or the French, domestic critics of Bush will serve.
* Ray, 2/17/2005 04:59:50 PM
